" It turned out that he went to his ex - GF ’s house the following Friday on Halloween , knife her 34 times and then disappeared . They found his soundbox two weeks afterward in a forest where he had hang himself . Still in his costume . "
A while ago, Reddit useru/throwaway_district9asked, “What has been your most bone-chilling, hair-raising, “Let’s get the hell out of here” experience?” and a surprising number of people reported having met or almost become the victim of a serial killer. Here are their stories, along with some from theBuzzFeed Community.
1.“During my second year of teaching, there was a long-term sub across the hallway from me that I had a good relationship with, and he always came to me for help when he needed it. He was a former college football star at out local university and was a volunteer coach for the football program at a nearby high school. On the last day of school, the day after students left and we were all wrapping things up before leaving for summer, we walked past each other in the hallway and I greeted him simply by saying, ‘What’s up Mr. Johnson!’ Not a word back from him; he didn’t even look at me, just had a thousand-yard stare down the other end of the hallway. Two days later, I turn on the news and the headlining story was, ‘Local substitute teacher arrested for triple-murder.’ He had killed his own son, niece, and brother later that day that I last saw him in that hallway.”
— zwood320
2.“My dad believed he had The Zodiac Killer as a patient WAY back in the very early ’70s when he was an active killer. My dad’s practice was in Richmond, CA, in the eastern half of the San Francisco Bay Area. This patient was always the last patient of the day. He was always talking about the case. bragging about all the weapons he had, and he even resembled the sketch of him. Dad was a first lieutenant, infantry, tail end of WW2 and did not scare. This patient though gave my dad the creeps. Finally, my dad gave the cops a sample of this patients handwriting. Shortly after this, he stopped being seen by my dad.”
— majorh
" deform out , he was arrested about five class ago for the slaying of 15 - year - former Tracy Gilpin in 1986 , when he was confining to 30 years old . Look him up . Michael Hand . You’ll see incisively how creepy he still looks . "
— identicalsnowflakes
4.“I was in Denver with my ex a few years back. We had just gotten off the light rail maybe five or six blocks from our Airbnb, and there was a guy trying to get a ticket for the train. As we were walking past, he explained he was like 50 cents short and asked if we could spare some change. All I had was a $5. I hand it to him and realize as he’s grabbing the cash that he has blood splattered on his hand. I look up and make eye contact and he had more blood splattered on his face, and a huge grin.”
" Time stopped for a second , and then he demand me if I wanted my variety . I tell him no , grabbed my X by the hand , and started hurry off seem over my shoulder every few seconds . He put up still as a statue watching us take the air aside until we turned a quoin . We found a church service and hunkered down in the doorway and called an Uber for the remain four block base on balls to our elbow room .
The next sidereal day we were fly out and saw a news story about a slaying that happened in the neighborhood we were remain in that nighttime . Someone was prod to death near the power train track at around 10:00 PM . We find off the railroad train at around 11:00 PM . Ca n’t confirm , but I may have met a murderer and given him five Buck to help evade the scene . "
— u / imploding_beachball
5.“Basically, back in the ’80s my mum lived in a bedsit, which is basically shared accommodation for those who don’t know, and had some guy knock on the door around 11 p.m. All the other young women she lived with had went out earlier in the evening to go drinking, but my mum had stayed back due to work the next day. My mum, being the wise person she is (thank god — otherwise I probably wouldn’t be here today and typing this), didn’t open the door to him but opted to shout out the window asking who it was. Some dude was stood there with a baseball cap on, briefcase in hand and insisted he had a business meeting with the business below the bedsit. Throughout the conversation he refused to look directly up at her and didn’t want to leave. My mum thought this was strange, especially at 11 p.m. at night, so effectively told him to go away and contact whoever he was supposed to be meeting. She reported it to the police.”
" Turns out it was the ' bedsit killer , ' and my momma could ’ve potentially been his next victim that night . She get a call back in 2021 from detective articulate they ’d send back a human beings on suspicion of the rapes and killings of two women back in the ' 80s through desoxyribonucleic acid ( someone in his family I believe got put on filing cabinet , and that ’s how they finally made that of the essence link ) and they highly suspected he was the adult male on the doorstep that dark from descriptions in her composition , and desire to apply this as evidence in court . My mammy lived one route over from one of the victims , who coincidently shared the same name as her , and looked really similar . We got ask round to the sentencing at royal court and managed to see him in the dock , and my mum think it was unquestionably the man from that night . He got a whole aliveness time for the murders and other criminal offense ( wo n’t go into it , but when they stop him for the slaying and search his place back in 2021 , they unveiled grounds that he ’d been abusing bodies in a mortuary in the hospital he influence at , for age ) . "
— atomic number 92 / kopfkinos _
6.“My grandparents bought their house in Tacoma, Wash., from Ted Bundy’s great-uncle. They were apparently super close and Ted spent a lot of time at their house when he was a kid. I only found this out recently and it’s a little disconcerting to think that around the same time Ted Bundy was killing dozens of women, I was a toddler spending weekends with my grandma in his old house.”
— jnell
7.“I had a run-in not to long ago. A man almost ran into me and looked me dead in the eyes then suddenly laid down on the sidewalk directly infront of me. My initial reaction was trying to help him, but someting was holding me back. I had a real bad feeling about him, so I was stuck in a dilemma of wanting to help him but also having a bad gut feeling about it. Eventually I went my way and felt horrible. But a week later this man randomly killed three woman and injured nine — including a child.”
" He just snapped and jab them out of nothing , they also say he had a misogynous motive . So to this solar day I am grateful I for once did n’t essay to help , God knows what he would have done . "
— may_nay76
8.“My mom went on a blind date and got a weird vibe so she ghosted. A few years later he was on the news for killing eight people (his ex-girlfriend and her whole family) before dying himself. She still remembers him talking about this canoe that he made and was proud of and then seeing it his front lawn in the news coverage.”
— gillianscheekbones
9.“My sister used to work as a security guard at a mall in Colorado. When she was just leaving work at 3 p.m. in the afternoon one day, a strange man comes up to her, asking if he can use her phone. She points over to a public phone and tells him he can use that one. He insists on using her phone and when she denied him a second time, he pulls out a gun at her and tells her to drive him somewhere. She immediately gets into the vehicle and drives with him in the passenger seat, having no idea where he is going to direct her. After driving 15ish minutes he then tells her to pull over to the side of the road and proceeds to take her purse, wedding ring, and key to the car and tells her to get in the trunk.”
" So she does what he ask . For whatever reason , the body was not locked and so while he ’s just barely hitting the gas to go , she finagle to stand out out of the car perish about 20 miles per hour . Later , after get that they guy had blast the car into the side of the road , the police find him and also obtain out that he had just down a 70 - year - old man after stealing his money . I do n’t live what I would do without my big sister . She ’s the light of my life as well as her two beautiful children . "
— s476835d36
10.“I accidentally met Jeffery Dahmer in Milwaukee the summer before he was caught. … It was late at night, and I was drunk and lost. My friends were going to school in Milwaukee, and I came up to visit. He pulled up and offered a ride, and a telephone back at his apartment to give them a call. I jumped in, and started having a super-creepy vibe from him. I got to his apartment and he offered a beer before the phone. It just all felt as creepy as could be. I literally ran out the door, and down the street as soon as fast as I could. He chased me for about half a block, but he couldn’t keep up.”
— u / Obiriron
11.“My cousin was at his wife’s (then girlfriend’s) house watching movies one night while her parents were out of town, when suddenly the phone starts ringing. My cousin’s girlfriend goes over and answers it and it’s her uncle asking to talk to her parents. He sounds super freaked out, so she’s asking him what’s wrong. He tells her the police had just left his house. She starts worrying, and pushes a little further. Turns out, her uncle lived in Jeffrey Dahmer’s old home, and he had told the police he had buried some bodies there. So the police go a-knockin’ on his door, and tell him they have to dig in his backyard, and explain why. Of course, he’s already freaked out enough by the idea that he’s living in Jeffrey Dahmer’s old house (he had just recently been arrested at this point), but it was made much worse by the fact that the police really did find some bodies back there.”
" My first cousin went on to work with some sort of church program , and part of his problem was to send bibles to repenting prisoner , and he finish up sending Jeffrey Dahmer a bible because he wish to repent for his sins so that he could go to heaven after he was pay the death penalty . "
— izzy22todd
12.“I used to be a Jehovah’s Witness as a kid. That thing where they go around knocking on doors to preach to you, I was doing that with my mom and a few others. We walked up this slanted driveway with trees around each side, they couldn’t see my mom and me from the street in the car. We knocked on the door; everything very normal. Except this time I got hit by something I couldn’t see. My ears started ringing and buzzing like crazy — it felt like a helmet had been put on. My body was screaming at me to leave. The man listened to my mom’s intro, then said he was interested in hearing more, and invited us in like some do.”
" All those things got so much strong . The melodic phrase felt like it start dense to keep me from moving . My mom looked at me and she said I look off . Pale and distant . She told him that I seemed to be inauspicious and that we should just exit . As soon as we stepped onto the ground in view of the car , I was altogether fine . My mom decided to take me home anyway . We go two blocks away , as luck would have it .
Few 24-hour interval later we read in the paper about how that man was arrested for rape and murder of a few women . I think one of them was as young as 16 . I was 12 at the time .
My mummy , duteous viewer she was at the time , was convinced the angel stepped in to protect us . "
— u / IDontEvenCareBear
13.“Way back when, my boyfriend at the time, myself and a few friends hung out one Saturday. One friend didn’t speak much, just a pretty nondescript 20 year old guy. It turned out that he went to his ex-GF’s house the following Friday on Halloween, stabbed her 34 times and then disappeared. They found his body two weeks later in a forest where he had hung himself. Still in his costume.”
— kestrelh
14.“My grandpa once bought shoes from John Wayne Gacy.”
— haleyjkuntz
15.“My wife and I were camping on the Oregon coast and jogged through a guy’s campsite that he’d set up on the trail down to the beach. On the way back to our campsite, I jogged a little bit ahead of my wife and she was really upset that I didn’t stay with her. She said the guy looked really creepy. We got back to Eugene and got a call from the state police asking if we saw anything strange. We gave an update about the guy camping above the beach and asked why they were calling. They said someone had drowned an off-duty policewoman in a tidal pool, cut their tent lines, and stolen her car. Turned out to be a serial killer who’d been killing people while traveling across the country.”
" They caught him in southerly California a few week after . "
— uranium / mppickett13579
And finally, let’s end on a handful of stories where we don’t know for sure if these people encountered killers, but it sure sounds like it.
16.“This was a few years ago now, maybe 2019? I worked in a bar and there was this guy who’d come in occasionally with his family (parents and siblings), I think he was about 25. Really nice guy — we had immediate chemistry. He was in the army and he was home and visited my work and I was just finishing my shift. He asks if I felt like going for a few drinks. He wasn’t a complete stranger and the other staff knew him, so I agreed. We went to a cocktail bar nearby and then he suggested going to his for a few drinks — he had a bar in his house. My first mistake was agreeing, but when I was 19 I was just happy to go along with things.”
" Anyway , all ’s lead good . We ’re get along finely and having a good dark . but the more he drank , thing began to change . He was telling me dreadful stories about thing he ’d seen while dish . Through the Nox , the look in his eyes lead off to transfer . I suppose it sound cliché , but there ’s no other agency to describe it . He had a bit of hydrophobia in them which he previously did n’t have . He was giving me loads of drinks and started offering to grease one’s palms me drugs ( I declined ) . i started to feel uneasy and texted my good friend saying I did n’t palpate right . He lived around the niche and say if I need to leave he ’d meet me .
I ’m time when I ’m going to leave . It ’s , like , 5 a.m. at this point . I was going to be polite and terminate my drink then give thanks him and manoeuvre out , fill my admirer then go home . Then he starts talking about stamp out people , and how he would go about it .
He tells me that he would run across a missy , get to make love her , and make her feel well-off and like he was n’t a threat . Then he ’d take her out for drinks and back to his for more , and get her really intoxicated . Something snap for me at this point that this was EXACTLY the thing he ’d done with me thus far — except I ( gratefully ) can handle my drink so I was n’t drunk . At this compass point , he bet completely different . Like , his face had changed altogether . He depend so sinister . He state me about how he ’d do the deed ( the tongue he specifically showed me when we first got to his , his preferent cooking knife apparently ) and how he ’d cover the room we were in with charge plate so that nothing had evidence on when he went to work dismembering . When I take what he ’d do with the trunk component part , he place out the oil color drum he had in the back garden and smile smugly .
Everything in my body was screaming at me that I postulate to forget , so I texted my best booster and literally sprinted out . he cussed me out as I did and slammed the doorway so hard it shook . My admirer held me while I sobbed . I get in at about 6:30 , and blocked him on everything . "
— u / smallcuppabrew
17.“I was installing a camera in a customer’s home with another guy at work. The wife of the couple we were installing for began the appointment by ranting [about the white house.] … It was her husband, though — the way he looked at both my coworker and I was like a person staring through me, like he knew he was looking at me but didn’t ‘see’ me. In his garage, where we were mounting the camera, this guy with the dead eyes closes the garage door, looks at me for a long five-second stretch, then says ‘yep, over there is where we let them suffer before we gotta cut the heads off. Gotta let them suffer before cutting the heads off.'”
" He lock up the outside garage door , turns around and just starts gnarl about cutting off heads again . He must have work up murder five to eight times in a 10 arcminute stretch . ' They call me Sergeant ( something , I forget ) . ' I reply : ' Thank you for your service ! I really admire veterans ! ' He await at me with those beat center : ' I was never in the military . ' Long stretchiness of silence . His wife predict him on his iWatch : ' Everything ok down there ? Anybody up to something ? ' Long stretch before he replies . ' Everything ’s all right . We ’re just in the garage . Everybody is here and we ’re fine . I ’ll call you if I call for you . ' It was like they were blab out about something they did n’t require us to hear .
My coworker and I kept our scissors and razor in our handwriting from about five minute into that service call for the residuum of the agency , neither of us countenance him be behind us where we could n’t see him . We were bracing for him to attempt to get us . After we wax the television camera he postulate us to go through the house back to the gore to learn it in . There was no way in hell I was doing that , so I said ' we require to take the ladder back out to the car . ' He said we could take it through the house ( remember , he had closed and locked the outside garage door earlier ) . I said it was a safety chance and demand to go out the boastful garage door . Once more he asked us to go through the house , to which I replied we could n’t do that because of company policy with the outdoor ladder . He star at me for some five to ten seconds in muteness , then went and opened the garage door . Both of us split out of there and did n’t look back . Told the society , lock the report , and wondered if we should have called the cops .
I have no idea what would have happened to my coworker had he depict up alone there . He was hypothesise to be alone , I haphazardly pick that solar day to inspect him . Both of us swear up and down he felt like he was calculate at something less than human and worthy of pop when he looked at us . Creepiest thing I ’ve ever been around . "
— u / Leadfoot - Lei
18.“I got into an Uber in Florida driven by a really old really big burly guy. Chat starts off normal but then he quickly starts talking about his time in the military. I asked him ‘what did you do’ and he says ‘I used to jump out of planes and kill people’. Fine, just classic veteran talk right? He then starts talking about in his later years of service he got a degree in psychology and started to do forensic work for the military…AND that he’s always been fascinated in serial killers. He goes on to say he would go back to do a PhD in what makes a serial killer.”
" Again , this could all be normal , but he then starts mumbling about how if they had known what take a crap a successive sea wolf when he was young , that might have help someone like him … He also dropped a bunch of lines like ' you should acknowledge how to stamp out anyone you meet within 10 seconds ' whilst stare at me in the mirror .
I start to get this material fright that he authentically was a serial killer in his younger days . Florida has quite a few cold cases go out back to the ' fourscore . He was immensely strong for his age , I ’m a large bozo and I could feel his strength in his hired hand shake . That plus all the unearthly captivation with sequent orca … it could all have been PTSD , but I could n’t wait to get out of that railway car even though it was across-the-board day with plenty of traffic . "
— atomic number 92 / friendswithseneca
19.Last one…“Found a piece of furniture on Craigslist that I wanted to buy. Agreed to meet the guy outside of his house to inspect/pickup. When I arrived, he wasn’t outside. Rung the doorbell, he answers and invites me in. Tells me the furniture is in his basement. Without leading me to it, he points to the door to his basement and tells me to go have a look. I notice the basement door has a lock and deadbolt. My internal subconscious alarm bells immediately being screaming at me to leave. I’m a 5'10” male in good shape, but I still wouldn’t be able to bust down a deadbolted door. I thanked him for his time and promptly left (fled)."
— atomic number 92 / Allfunandgaymes
Submissions have been edited for length / clarity .
