Listen, I think that every single one of us has been caught being creepy here and there, whether we realized that’s what was happening or not. For me, I have a tendency to stare while my mind wanders, and even though I’m not looking at anyone in particular, it doesn’t seem that way, you know?
These 17 people had similar moments of clarity, and they had to confess to themselves that yes, they were being totally creepy.
17. He’s probably used to it.
I automatically lock our front door when we’re home. Nice young man came to fix the internet the other day and I locked the door behind him and then immediately said “ok, that was really creepy. I do it automatically.”
And quickly unlocked it.
16. What else can you do?
At the gym I often look around between sets, not really at anyone or anything, but a few times I’ve glossed over and then realized I’ve been staring at someone.
I then proceed to avoid all eye contact.
Like what are you supposed to do between sets, any choice is the wrong choice. If you stay on the phone you’ll get distracted, if you just look up or down it will be weird. And if you look around you will eventually be looking at someone, I hate this.
15. Definitely don’t do that.
I had a cop come to my apartment in the middle of the night (guy above me was cleaning his gun and it went off so the cop was checking on me) I open the door and let him in and then immediately locked it. The cop turned around and was like ya please don’t lock me in. Whoops
14. It only took two years.
When I was in grade 5 I had a crush on this guy from the grade above. I would ask my friends to help take or find pictures of him and send them all to me.
After 2 years I realized how creepy I was and damn was I embarrassed.
13. A total miscommunication.
Ok, this turned out to be a total miscommunication, but it’s worth sharing anyway…
I met this guy a few years ago on a dating site. Both of us had usernames that weren’t our own name and we didn’t have our face in our profile pictures. After we chatted for a day, we shared selfies and then agreed to meet up
We ended up having an amazing first date and the several more. After about a few months of fun, he suddenly ends it. I was pretty heart broken.
This is where the “creepiness” starts:
Around the corner from my work there was a bar everyone went to, but it wasn’t much my scene. So, I used to trek a bit further to a jazz/speakeasy bar instead. Never been there before, but decided to go after a few coworkers suggested it as an alternative. Well, turns out his band plays there pretty often. I saw him there about three times, and then changed workplaces and never went back
I ended up getting a job at a Cafe in the middle of the city. There was no free parking nearby except for literally out the front of his apartment. Don’t know why the council made that 50 metre strip free parking (possibly because of the council bikes there), but either way it was the only place within walking distance I could park. Believe me, I checked. So for three months I would park out the front of his apartment every few days for about 8 hours. Eventually I parked a few kilometres away and took an e-scooter
I’m back on the dating site, start chatting with a random dude with no picture and a fake name, and low and behold it’s him. He blocks me once he figures it out
Then I leave that job and get another one at a restaurant. I’m driving passed one night to show my friend where I work, and I notice said ex is there. Next shift I ask if he goes there, and turns out he is a massive regular, there all the time, buddies with the owner. Then they say “oh, YOU’RE the stalker ex???”
They told me everything. Turns out he thought I followed his band tour dates to find out what bar they played at, stalked his apartment by parking out front for a few months every few days, and then scoured the dating site to find him again. He had been bemoaning to the owner and staff for months about this crazy ex girlfriend of his, and here I was trying to defend myself. Luckily they believed me, but they obviously let him know i worked there because he never went back
So yeah. I wasn’t ever intentionally being creepy, but our paths crossed so much within the several months after breaking up that it definitely looked that way. Poor guy
12. We all just cringed together.
When Snapchat first came out, I didn’t know that screenshotting someones photo notified them.
11. A double fail.
I’m into bird photography for the last 5 years. Helps me disconnecting from… job, peoples, get some stress away and tend to space out quite a bit. It’s my moment, in a way.
I was trying to take a grey heron in the morning, with the moon in the background for a solid week in a park nearby. D500, 200-500mm. Had to wait for the bird to be perched in a few specific trees around 7am, so i went there every morning for a while before work. Can be frustrating but it’s part of the “fun”. You wait, and wait, and wait until you finally snap that one shot.
Finally get close to get the shot i had in mind, with the bird almost aligned with the moon. Pretty happy, double check my settings. What i failed to notice was this woman doing yoga under the tree i had my camera pointed for… a while, and she thought i was snapping pictures of her with a rather large teleobjective. She walked away being visibly pissed.
Also i screwed that heron picture.
10. How silly of me.
This was at the end of a 12 hour shift on my feet all day so I was quite tired:
I was driving home from a long day at work and decided to take the shortcut home which was a dangerous, bendy, dark, country road. It was about 22:30 and pitch dark, there are residential houses around the area so it wasn’t completely secluded but quite secluded. As I’m driving, singing along to Taylor Swift on the radio I see a young girl walking by herself. People wouldn’t walk this road during the day, it would be too dangerous, so this was unusual.
I barely noticed her and could have hit her as there was no footpath on this very thin two way road, no road markings, sharp bends, no lights, and barely a speed limit. She had no reflective gear or lights on. There was no close call or anything as I was driving slow but I didn’t see her until I was only a few meters away. I drive passed and then think to myself “god she’s either going to get hit by a car or worse, what the f is she doing walking down this road by herself this late”.
In my sleep deprived state, I put the car in reverse and go back towards her. With hindsight the look on her face was pure panic- which is now completely understandable, I too would shit myself at this stranger reversing their car back to me on this dark secluded road. She takes out her phone to pretend she’s on a call. I pull down my window ask if she wants a lift to the end of the road or anywhere, she just says no thanks and presumably prays she doesn’t get murdered and I say ok but drivers can’t see you on the road and I drive off home.
Only realising then how silly that was of me and what a fright I must have given that poor girl, what was I thinking she was going to get in my car?!
9. She looked concerned.
I was about 18 at the time and went to visit a friend who was in Uni about 2 hours away. Caught the train there and we go out to the club later that night. I see a very cute looking girl and try to initiate conversation – it does not go well and I learn my lesson pretty quick and go back to the dance floor. This is the part of the story I remember clearly.
Turns out I had way too many jaeger bombs that night and saw on the club’s Facebook page the next day a picture of that girl with me dancing roughly 3m behind and her face looked so concerned, clearly aware of me trying to seduce her with dance… Yeah glad I grew out of that one.
8. Sleep deprivation is real, friends.
So this was back when my son was barely a year old. My son had a phase for like half a year back then, where he was refusing to sleep in his own bed. So more often than not me and my wife would have to keep him in between us in our bed or he would constantly keep waking up crying throughout the night.
The problem was that I snore a lot and sleep quite heavily. So our routine most nights would be that I’d eventually wake up the kid with my heavy snoring. My wife would then have to shove me to wake me up and ask me to shuffle out off bed and relocate myself to our bed sofa in the living room, so she and the kid could go back to sleep. This happened so frequently during this period that we never really bothered to fold up the sofa during the days and always kept it made as a bed instead.
Now this particular night was no different than the others: In the middle of the night I wake up from my kid crying and my wife nudging me. Still heavily affected by sleep drunkenness and barely brought to awareness. Instinctively knowing what to do, I roll out of bed and shuffle myself out into the living room to crash on the bed sofa yet again.
While I lay there and move around a bit to find a comfortable position, my hand suddenly brushes against something warm and soft.
“Hmm..” I almost think to myself. My mind is too focused on trying to get some sleep that it doesn’t really process this new information yet.
My hand however instinctively squeezes the object a bit to figure out what it might be. It’s strange because it feel like my sons foot.
Suddenly the object jerks away from me. “Oh Ok, my son is here.” I half-awarely think to myself. I guess I assume I must’ve dozed off and my wife left him out here with me for some reason.
I continue to lay there trying to sleep for another minute or two. But then the realization suddenly hits me: “Oh shit, that is not my son!”
See the thing I’ve left out from this story and that I was completely unaware of in my sleep drunken state – it was that on this particular night we had guests staying over.
It was not my son. It was my wife’s friend and her 2 year old daughter who were visiting us and sleeping on our sofa while they were staying over.
So here I am. Sneaking into their room in the middle of the night, crawling into their bed and squeezing their feet. And that’s when I realize: “Oh crap, I’m so f**king creepy right now.”
Well, trying to keep the rest of the story as short as possible; I obviously tried to sneak out of the living room as soon as I noticed it. Hoping that no one noticed my unintentional “visit”.
In the morning the first thing I did was that I apologized. My wife’s friend had noticed it. But luckily she had also heard my son crying. So she had assumed there was no ill intent when I had evacuated the bedroom. Only a bit strange when I snuck in and laid down in the foot end of their bed (it was a full square bed and they slept in a different orientation on it than I usually did). Still though I felt (and still feel) really awkward about it even if it was almost nine years ago now.
7. Poor choices were made.
So I’m a photographer (male) and I wanted to do some night-cityscapes from the roof of a local car park. Now this place isn’t the safest (last time I was there with some photographer friends we watched a drug deal go down) but I figured the risk I was taking was just a personal one. Besides, I had a great idea – I’d dress completely in black and turn all the lights off on my camera. As the car park was completely unlit, any unsavoury characters wouldn’t even be able to see me. Yes, this is not a story written by a genius…
Well, it sort of worked. I stood there in the inky black night taking pictures, feeling fairly safe in my invisibility. I had noticed a few cars on the top floor but they were all empty.
Then the door to the roof swings open, introducing some light to the scene. I’m still in the shadows though. I look to the door and to my horror I see two women returning to their car after a night out. This is the moment I realise the error in my plan of being a large male, dressed entirely in black, stood in the shadows of a dodgy car park.
I have a decision to make. If they see me, they’ll get the shock of their lives. Still, I’m in the shadows, it’s still dark. Maybe if I stay completely still they won’t notice me…
Reader, I chose poorly.
It worked at first, but then the woman in front locked her eyes on me and just froze. I was mortified. I had to save the situation before she had a heart attack. These were the words I chose…
“It’s OK, it’s OK… Don’t worry! I’m not a weirdo! Erm, well, I mean maybe I do look like a weirdo standing alone in a car park but well… I mean I’m not that sort of weirdo… I’m just taking pictures… I mean of the city! Anyway, it’s OK, it’s OK, don’t worry, it’s OK…”
If it worked, it worked because my pathetic attempt to find the right words had removed any menace from my appearance but yeah, lesson learned about standing around in dark car parks. You might think the lesson should have been learned earlier, and you’d be right.
6. Nothing went according to plan.
I was walking home pretty drunk one night and I noticed a woman walking towards me looking uncomfortable so I thought I would just take another way home and took a left before our paths crossed.
Then she took the same road. I was like ah man I don’t want to go this way now it’s creepy of me so I decide to stop and head back but as I am heading back she has disappeared. Awesome.
Then I am nearly back to my original path and I see she has stopped in a phone booth as I am just about at the phone booth. I freaking pause a moment to work out how to avoid her but then think ok, just go home and I walk past her in the phone booth to go home.
I just wanted to avoid this woman and made it so much worse.
5. In reality…
I used to catch women’s eyes and then look away as if I was slick and I would do it a few times thinking that I’m making her think I’m slightly interested but not quite.
In reality these girls were probably freaking out about some weirdo who keeps staring at them when theyre not looking but looks away once caught. Makes me cringe.
4. I’m not sure if that makes it better worse, but it’s funny.
Something like this happened after my first child was born.
It was like 2 AM and couldn’t remember where I parked in the parking garage of the hospital, because my brain was zonked.
I followed this woman through like three levels. She kept walking faster and looking behind her. Could tell she was freaked out.
I finally had to just yell “I’M NOT FOLLOWING YOU. I CAN’T REMEMBER WHERE I PARKED!”
3. Oopsie.
27 year old female here. I have a 5 year old son. 6 months ago we hadn’t chosen a school yet and it was dwelling on my mind. I thought asking a random teenage girl on a train what school she goes to and whether she likes it was a good idea. 😏
I noticed she missed her stop and asked her if she was ok with getting home. I was in Mum mode but realised I came off as a creep when I looked away from her for a moment and looked back to where she was sitting to realise she was rushing down the aisle to the opposite side of the train to get away from me.
2. A bad first impression.
I was looking for a new apartment, and met this girl who lived in an area that I was interested in, and worked very close to where I worked. I was interrogating her about her commute, which route she takes to and from work, where she goes shopping etc. and not noticing that she was getting more and more uncomfortable.
Finally one of my friends realized what was going on and explained that I wasn’t some stalker, rather I was looking for an apartment and trying to figure out what my commute might look like.
The look on her face made me realize how uncomfortable I must have been making her, and explained why her answers were getting increasingly vague and evasive as I went on.
I apologized profusely and she was cool about it. I did end up seeing her often after that because I ended up moving into an apartment across the street from hers, and we eventually became friends, but bad first impressions to be sure.
1. Those kids were taught well!
It was raining and I was driving back to my office from a meeting and I saw two kids walking a busy stretch of road heading for an apartment complex that was still a bit off.
I pulled over and offered them a ride cause I’m a mom and dunno. They both refused and trudged on.
It literally took 30 minutes before I realized I asked 2 random kids to get in my car. Of course they refused!
I mean, it happens to the best of us, right?
Tell us in the comments about a time you were being totally creepy but didn’t realize it until later!
