Friendships that start innocently enough can get very scary, very fast. These stories, curated from Reddit, are all about the insane stalkers that women have had to deal with. From the creepy guy that did weird things to small animals to the obsessed guy that didn't understand any boundaries to the guy that couldn't understand no, no matter how many times she told him. Creeps in school, creeps at the office, creeps everywhere! Sometimes they didn't even know their stalkers! This isn't about the FriendZone, it's about the PyschoZone.
But Why Did She Date Him??
“Before I even met my stalker in real life, I met him over the summer in a kik (yes, kik) groupchat I got added to. He went to my school and was a year older.
When school started, I had no idea what he looked like and I wouldn’t have counted us as friends. I had a feeling he thought we were closer than we were, because every time he saw me in the hallway or something, he would send the time and location to the groupchat (i.e. ‘1st floor 10:45’). Keep in mind, I still didn’t know what he looked like, so I didn’t know which student in the hallway I just walked in was him. It really freaked me but he wouldn’t stop, so eventually I went along with the weird game once I actually met him in real life. It didn’t make it less weird. It actually made me quite paranoid, because he would jokingly send ‘your bedroom 10:00 PM.’
Another creepy thing he did was find out my tumblr and send me weird messages every. single. day. I don’t remember what they were, and they weren’t threatening, just strange and vague, but with an overall creepy vibe. But the part that bothered me was that he didn’t admit he was sending them until a month or two after they started, after I had constantly complained to him that I was getting weird messages from someone I didn’t know and it was creeping me out.
At some point we actually started ‘dating’ in the sense that we were both incredibly awkward and didn’t know what we were doing. We never went on actual dates. One time he made me a heart out of blue colored pencils because blue is my favorite color. It was a bunch of colored pencils sharpened to different lengths and taped or tied together to form the shape of a heart. While well intended, it looked like either a 5-year-old or a serial killer made it. He dropped it off in my homeroom and didn’t say anything to me. I just remember the girl next to me going ‘uh…what is that?’ and I shoved it deep in my backpack.
Last, but not least, getting back on topic to the disturbing side of things: he would go on my parents facebook to find pictures of me as a young kid and photoshop my face onto memes. He thought it was funny, but I was freaked out that he even found those pictures. They were just from family photos on my parents accounts, but still incredibly weird as I had never told him my parents names. Also I’m 95% certain my parents accounts are private. He would send them too his friends too, and didn’t care that I told him I was uncomfortable.
This was a long time ago and I’m still scared that he secretly follows my social media!”
A Criminal Creep
“There’s this guy who was my dad’s friend when I was growing up, but I didn’t see him from the time I was about 8 until I was 23 when my dad went to prison and the guy moved across the country to help take care of my little brothers.
I barely talked to him at all as an adult, but he was obsessed with me. He got my number from my sister and started texting me constantly and emailing me all the time. Long emails about how much he loves me and how unreasonable I was being by not talking to him. He would beg me for nude photos and offered to buy me an expensive camera if I would take pictures for him or preferably let him take the pictures. He offered to pay my rent for some hand action or buy me a new computer for nudes. He sent me nude photos of his own all the time.
The most disturbing part was him talking about how much he had always loved me even when he babysat me as a child and how we had had a ‘relationship’ even then. He said I had always ‘been his.’
It escalated more and more when he started parking across the street from my apartment waiting for me to leave to try to talk to me. I had to retrain my dog to use newspaper for the bathroom because I was afraid to go outside. He threatened to hurt my brothers or himself if I reported him to the police when I threatened him that I would. I opened the door one day to him sleeping on my front step leaning against my screen door.
Eventually, it escalated to the point where he threatened and hit me. Now he’s in prison.”
The Back Window Man
“I was at home alone in my previous apartment, in a not-so-great neighborhood. My apartment was on the ground level, and my bedroom window faced a back alley. A dumpster sat less than two car lengths away, where homeless people often rummaged.
Just before dawn one morning, I heard a tapping at my window. My back was to the window, and my eyes were now wide open. It was still dark outside. I sleep with my lamp on, and my worn-out vertical blinds were missing a slat, causing a six-inch gap. So I knew that whoever/whatever the source of the tapping could see me lying in bed as plain as day.
The tapping was brief – maybe five or six taps, so I spent the next five seconds or so frozen, bizarrely trying to convince myself it was something/anything else but a person watching me and tapping on my window (maybe an animal?)
But then came more tapping.
Now, I was faced with the terrifying reality that someone had been watching me through my window in the dark for God knows how long, and he’d decided to tap on the window. Had one of the homeless people become aggressive during their dumpster dive? Something told me that nothing good could come from turning around and looking at the window. If he got me to look at him…what then?
Remember, my back was to the guy, so I sat up slowly, rubbing my eyes and pretending I was too groggy to hear him. I stood up and ‘hazily’ made my way out of my bedroom as though I were going to the restroom or something.
Once I was out of his sight, I ran to the phone to dial 911, considering whether to forget any embarrassment of being in my t-shirt and underwear, and bolt out my front door, which was out of sight from the intruder. I just wasn’t sure I could outrun whoever it was, or whether anyone would help me if I couldn’t.
Before I could make a decision, I heard the loud ‘pop’ of my window being pried open. I thought my heart would jump from my chest.
At the same time, I could hear my upstairs neighbor Mike descending his stairs. I opened my door a few inches and peeked out to ask for his help. Mike was a big guy, and I’d heard he was trained in martial arts of some sort. He didn’t hesitate to respond, hustling to the back of my apartment to see what was going on. Within a few seconds, I heard rumbling and someone being thrown against the wall and into the bushes. A few moments later, Mike came around to my front door, telling me not to worry about seeing that guy again. He’d beaten him up pretty badly. I wanted to believe Mike – that the would-be intruder was maybe dumpster diving, but that he would (hopefully) never venture this way again.
But it wasn’t a homeless person. According to Mike, when the guy escaped, he ran to the front of my building, hopped into a red sports car, and sped off. My neighborhood wasn’t a ‘red sports car’ kind of place. The police later told me that the intruder was likely someone who’d seen me out somewhere and followed me home to find out where I lived.”
This Guy Should Be In Jail
“I worked at Sears. I was 18 at the time, I worked at Sears for maybe a year at this point and had a few creepy customers, this dude took the whole cake though.
It was ‘Casual Wear’ day at work. I wore some black pants, and a more revealing white blouse with short sleeves, which exposed some of my tattoos. (I had a Majoras Mask and triforce tattoo at this point, from the Legend Of Zelda) The creep noticed and stopped me to compliment my tattoos. We both expressed how much we love the Zelda series.
I was stupid and naive, and wasn’t the best at making friends, so I thought this creep was pretty cool. I basically had the mentality that if you liked video games, you couldn’t be that bad of a person. We exchanged numbers and I thought it was great that I made another friend.
Then his creepy side started coming out. If I didn’t text back fast enough, he would ‘joke’ that I was busy sleeping around and didn’t have time for him, or ‘joke’ that he would cut himself if I didn’t reply. One night he texted me saying he wish he could kill his ‘soon-to-be’ ex-girlfriend. That freaked me out, so I blocked him immediately.
The next day he came to my workplace. He demanded that I unblock him and make it up to him or else. I told him no, I owe him nothing. He left and I thought we were done. I let my other coworkers know about the situation and told them not to let him near me. He came back and pushed past my coworkers into our back room, where he found me stocking the shoes. He pushed me and demanded again that I make it up to him or ‘(I’ll) end up just like his ex-girlfriend, or even worse!’ I screamed and my coworkers got security. I was in tears as he was dragged away, and had to continue working after I settled down.
The creep wasn’t finished, though. The Sears I worked at had two levels. All the basic Sears stuff upstairs, and downstairs was mailing and the discount items. The bathroom for employees was also downstairs. Apparently the creep had gone into the electronic section (which is beside the stairs) and was posing as a customer. He followed me downstairs and into the woman’s bathroom where he screamed at me madly and grabbed me. He held me against the bathroom wall, right before the stalls, and started touching me inappropriately, telling me ‘this is what I get, it’s my fault this happened,’ and then told me ‘to be a good girl and not scream or struggle.’
Of course I screamed and struggled, and thank goodness the mail ladies could hear. Security came and got rid of him again. We had really bad security. I’m not the first to have this problem!”
The Harasser Gets Away With It
“I had a co-worker grab my chest, slapped my behind, and secretly take pics of me. My 50-year-old CEO at that company also had a huge crush on me. Always tried to touch me, told me he loved me, and loved to talk about my body with other co-workers.
So co-worker gets in trouble for harassment after making multiple reports. The CEO told me he fired the offending coworker, but several weeks later, the co-worker came back. I meet with CEO to ask why he was still there and was told that coworker had quit and came back. He claimed I was making stuff up that there was no report in my file or his.
After I left the company, I heard that the CEO had my co-worker quit until they could legally throw away his files and rehire the co-worker with a clean slate. This was before the #metoo movement, so no one took me seriously.”
The Creepy Kid Stays Creepy
“There’s a boy with autism in my school and he has ‘stalked’ multiple girls. According to a friends he likes ‘chubby chicks.’
He would start saying hello to me in the halls and I’d say hi back, because I didn’t know if I knew him or not. Then he asked me if I was going to homecoming, which I said yes. In his mind, that meant we were going together and he followed me around the whole night. The last straw for me was posting a selfie on snapchat, he screenshot it, and when I confronted him about it he said, ‘Oh I didn’t want you to know.’ When I reported him, the dean took out a very specific piece of paper with name length words all written in the same color. I have every right to believe that those words are the names of girls who he’s also done this to.
The school has yet to do anything but ‘talk to him.’ He makes ‘rounds’ upstairs every morning just walking around and I’ll see him when I’m going to my locker and he’ll look at me and side eye me just kinda watching me and it makes me so uncomfortable and worried. I have scenarios in my head where one day he’s gonna touch me and I’m going to end up in a fight.”
This Woman Was Certifiable!
“I’m actually a guy, but I had a crazy stalker once.
Two years ago, around Valentine’s Day, I was given a box of homemade chocolates by my co-worker. She had some bandages on her fingers and I asked what they were for, she said that she burned herself while baking them.
Since this is an extremely rare occurrence, I felt really happy and took it home with me after work to sample the goodies.
Eating my first piece I noticed that it tasted slightly off… less sweet and somewhat salty. I disregarded the taste at first, since I didn’t know what homemade chocolates taste like. By my fourth, piece the saltiness is starting to stacking up which made me stop eating, so due to my curiosity I smelled the chocolate and it smelt a bit like iron.
In my head I thought, ‘Nah, it can’t be.’ I then took a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the shelf and drizzled it on the fourth, which was half-eaten and it began to foam.
Wide eyed. I pointed the bottle to the whole box and emptied almost three fourths of its contents… and to my horror all of the chocolates foamed and overflowed from the box.
She had mixed some of her blood in the chocolate and that is what triggered the foaming reaction from the hydrogen peroxide as it is used for disinfecting wounds. I had only noticed it when I remembered the bandages on her fingers.
I felt my stomach twist and turn and I barfed at the sink and called in sick. A few days later, when she saw me she asked how was chocolate. I said that it was delicious… and immediately got away from her.”
Thousands Of Miles Couldn’t Keep Him Away
“He lived in Germany. I live in California. He sent me a satellite image of my house one day when I’d never told him where I lived. I told him how upset and creeped out this made me, but he said that in Germany, people aren’t so uptight about this type of ‘stalker’ behavior.
Fast forward a few weeks later. He told me that he was taking a work trip to the United States and wanted to visit my town. I said no.
Fast forward a few more weeks. He literally was IN MY TOWN. He came to my city from Germany despite me telling him not to. He sent me a photo of the mall down the street that he was at. I decided to meet him at the mall because I didn’t want to risk him coming to my house and hurting me. I was 18 and home alone and didn’t know what to do.
It was awkward but we parted ways afterwards and I haven’t spoken to him since. I got lucky. I think he was just a creepy guy with no boundaries, but he’s never hurt me or sent a bomb to my house or anything. That could’ve ended very badly.”
Who Says Romance Is Dead?
fizkes/Shutterstock.com
“I used to walk to work every morning and one morning some guy sitting in a little deli I’d pass by waved at me. I didn’t think anything of it, just waved back and kept hoofing it to my job that I really hated. Now and again I’d see the guy there, we’d wave at each other, and that was all the interaction we ever had.
One morning, he thought it would be a great idea to run out of the restaurant to scream in my face, ‘Marry me!’ at the top of his lungs.
I’d just had a fight with my boss over a project that I’d already been working on for 18 hours with no sleep on and was now headed back into the office to work on after a whopping two hours of sleep, so I was not in the mood for anyone’s crap. I screamed back ‘NO!’ so loud I swear it stopped traffic. He turned and ran down the street and I never saw him again.
It was not how I’d imagined my first marriage proposal would be.”
Sounds Like She Dodged A Serial Killer
SpeedKingz/Shutterstock.com
“He wrote rather disturbing poetry about me and how I was his ‘angel’ who saved him from his ‘inner darkness.’ Then after school one day while I was walking home, he followed me and proceeded to show me a homemade guillotine device that he was apparently very proud of. He took a mouse he caught with a glue trap out of his pocket and chopped its head off with the guillotine. I have no idea what he was thinking, but needless to say I was not impressed.
I generally avoided him the rest of that school year and was thrilled when summer came. He didn’t come back to school that next year, and no one ever really knew why but I suspect it had something to do with his mental health.”
The Rantings Of A Madman
“L – friend/my savior
CS – creepy classmate/stalker
What you guys need to know: I am a very, VERY touchy-feely, sweet type of person and I would always hold hands with my friends, lay my head on their shoulders, and would give them warm hugs. There’s no malice whatsoever, because that’s how affectionate I am.
Okay now with the story:
This happened during the first major school play, during our sophomore year in high school. I was assigned as the head of the props committee and I was given the liberty to choose classmates I wanted to be in the props committee too. Of course I chose CS and L to be in the props because I know guys like them wouldn’t want to be a part of the play. Like I said, I’m a very sweet and affectionate person and I felt pity that not many of my classmates were talking to CS because he was the odd one out, the class outcast and it was only L who was talking to him because they’re seat mates, but that’s it. So I approached him and befriended him to make him feel less lonely, you know what a good person would do. And along the span of making props, CS and I got close. Worst thing to have happened, sadly.
The next day during lunch, I guess I left my bag unzipped because when I got back from the cafeteria there was a brown paper bag inside which I know I didn’t bring. Picking it up, there was a Hershey’s’ chocolate bar inside it and a small note taped on it that says, ‘You look so pretty today.’ I really didn’t mind the letter because the only thing in my mind is that I got a chocolate bar. Nonetheless, I showed the note to my best friend and L, both of them had different reactions, my best friend being the hopeless romantic she is, was beyond happy that I have a secret admirer. L on the other hand, was irked.
It happened again the next day, and the next week, and the next two weeks, with the messages becoming longer, ‘Your smile is so cute and your (yes, ‘your’) so beautiful.’ ‘You have a cute laugh and I really like you.’ That kind of stuff.
One day, I saw CS fiddling at his phone or tablet which was undoubtedly angled at me. Again, I let this slide. That’s when L walked by and slipped a paper on my lap saying, ‘look at your phone.’ So I took my phone from my bag, turned it on and L had sent a message. ‘I have something to tell you later. be online.’
That night at home I was waiting for L to go online and when he was, his first message to me was to avoid CS and to stop talking to him. I ask why and he sent pictures of a phone. It was pictures of me, pictures from my Facebook, pictures during class, stolen pictures and some pictures were obviously zoomed in or cropped so that it was only my face in the picture. Obviously, I got creeped out and asked L whose phone it was and lo and behold, it was from CS’s phone. L further told me the paper bag with the Hershey’s and messages were from CS, he knew from the start because of the handwriting and I got creeped out more. L told me to be safe and to start avoiding CS from now on and I did. The next few days I gave the paper bag to L without getting the Hershey’s’ and I think CS was slowly noticing that I was avoiding him.
This was where crap hits the fan.
Another day of me leaving school at 6:00 pm because of a school seminar, as usual. I was walking to the main gate when I noticed there weren’t many students out for some reason which made the walkway less crowded. The next thing I knew I felt someone behind me and there was CS, failing to hide behind a big bush. My red flag was waving so I called L and told him that CS is behind me and hiding behind a bush. L frantically told me to walk fast towards the bus stop and stay on the line with him. I try my best to calm my nerves and walk fast, I would simply look over my shoulder and I could see CS, keeping up and almost 100 feet near me and I think L picked it up from how I gasped and he told me to run. I ran towards the main gate and to the overpass and hid behind a stall selling street food by the sidewalk. A few minutes later I saw CS by the bus stop, looking around and was low-key checking if the students by the bus stop wearing our school uniform was me. I was still on the call with L and I told him CS was looking for me by the bus stop. Fortunately CS left and went back to the overpass, but L told me I should go to the bus stop on the next block just to make sure. I got home safely.
The final straw was when CS shoved an envelope inside my bag and it was three yellow pad papers, I didn’t get to read it because L took it from me and he read it instead. After reading it, he tore the papers and threw it. I asked him what the letter was about and he told me CS thought I loved him because I befriended him and that we were in a relationship and was confused at why I was avoiding him. He goes on and on that he loves me and that we were the perfect couple and I was dumbfounded. I backtracked to how I befriended him and how I approached him and I wondered if I led him on but I know I wasn’t. I was just being myself.
Push comes shove and I told CS that I didn’t love him, nor were we ever in a relationship. The rest of the school year went smooth except for the times CS and I were in a group for a project or activity, but I made sure to keep the conversation short and quick.”