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No one likes that feeling, the one where you’re scared but you’re not sure what you’re scared of, and all of the hairs on your body stand up at once.
Fear is actually a good thing, though, because without it, human beings surely would have been extinct a long time ago.
Nowadays we don’t have to evade animal predators, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be afraid of out there – and these 17 people knew right away they’d met someone they should fear.
17. Don’t talk to strangers.
Years ago I took a long trip to South America where I backpacked around for like 2 months. On my flight home I had a stopover in La Paz, Bolivia. While sitting around at the terminal waiting for my connecting flight I heard 5 or 6 guys talking about Texas, where I lived at the time. I also heard some Mexican slang so I wondered if maybe they were from Texas or possibly Mexico but spent time in Texas.
Now for the last two weeks of the trip I was traveling by myself and I spent a lot of time alone and was kind of looking for some conversation. So I went over and said something to them in Spanish like, “Hey, I heard you all talking about Texas. I’m from Austin. Are you from there too?” They all stopped cold and stared at me. One of them broke the silence in a semi-friendly way and said something (I can’t really remember what) but then went silent again.
I then looked over to one of them who was seated. He was short and was wearing all black and had this black wide brimmed hat on. He was staring at me from under the brim of his hat with this ice cold look that sent chills down my spine. I immediately sensed I wasn’t welcome and just kind of smiled and said something mundane to the guy who had spoken and awkwardly walked away.
I may be being paranoid and reading way too much into this. But my immediate thought, based on their hostile reaction to me, was to wonder if I had just tried to talk to some people who were involved in the drug trade and they wondered if I was some sort of undercover person trying to get close to them lol. Probably bullshit, I know.
They were probably just wondering who this weirdo was that randomly tried to talk to them in the airport. But I will never forget that dude’s stare. It was like he was looking into my soul. Scared the sh%t out of me.
16. Of course he is.
There was this guy at school who was always nice and had this kind of archaic authority (not tall, not extra-strong, but kind of bold). The problem: he also was a complete and total 100% Nazi.
He was center of all the Nazi pupils of our school, and connected to many skinheads from the Frankfurter Kameradschaften. Everyone knew if you had beef with him, he could easily summon a couple of muscles to your home and beat you up. He also knew that everyone knew that. He had a way of looking at you with a slight smile and hard blue eyes that gives shivers.
He is now a lawyer afaik.
15. I hope he never goes back.
I worked at McDonald’s and this dude applied, I’m the one who handed him an application, he gave off instant creepy vibes.
When he came in for an interview I told my manager he was weird but he smiled his way through the interview and got hired.
Pretty sure he was a psychopath. And he knew he couldn’t fake being a real human in front of me, he would give me real sinister looks Behind people’s backs. Ended up getting fired, he pushed a big ladder over that almost nailed someone, camera saw it all. He claimed he was “just venting off a little steam”.
He came back as a customer and reordered the same thing like 10 times and just creeping up the place and trying to walk into the kitchen, to eat in the break room etc. Manager finally called the cops. He laughed and bailed on foot across the highway. Haven’t seen him since.
14. This escalated so quickly.
I worked at a retail store and one of the vendors that brought us bags of ice asked me if I wanted to go on a date with him. I declined.
The next time he came in he was strangely euphoric and preaching “God is so good”.
A couple of weeks later I saw him on the local news for killing his toddler who was disabled.
13. Holy buckets.
The first job I ever had was a host at a small, slow business restaurant. I was always the only front-of-house employee and seated everyone, which was usually fine.
Some creepy kid my age at the time (17-19) came in and asked for an application. He was wearing a white dress shirt and a tie that was tied poorly and way too short, his hair was disheveled, and he just had those ominous, potential-psychopath eyes… I gave him the application anyway, figured it wasn’t my job to keep people from applying. He said thanks and left.
Police came a few hours later to ask a few questions. Apparently after coming by, this kid walked home in the apartments behind the restaurant and beat his mom half to death with a baseball bat. I answered the cops the best I could, but I didn’t really know anything about it (and still don’t). He, uh, didn’t get the job.
12. Not the best childcare.
I don’t know his name and only just began to have these memories not be repressed but… my uncle was part of the cult the family international when I was under 7 years old. Their propaganda video is on YouTube but yeah, said uncle was trusted with me as a babysitter for hours to days at a time since both of my parents worked long shifts (mom was respiratory therapist in a hospital and worked at a long term vent facility for people in comas on the weekend).
I remember a bright multicolor room and a knock at the door. My uncle answers the door and a man with a large colorful parrot type bird on his shoulder walks in. In the memory I’m so terrified of this man that I’m crying and trying to hide…. the cult was known for pedophilia and distributing “educational ” pamphlets to children of cult members that taught them how to do sexual things and tried to brainwash them into thinking that it was what good children did and if they didn’t do it then god didn’t love them.
I don’t remember much more but what I do remember isn’t something I’d say here if you catch my drift…
My dad nor mom knew because I couldn’t articulate it at that age and this was back before the realpush in the mid 90s to teach children that if someone touched them like that it’s wrong.
Parrot man was pretty high up in the cult. I was my uncle’s present for parrot man. It only stopped because my dad got home early and walked in on me watching the very same propaganda that’s on youtube (was on vhs or beta at the time).
I haven’t looked into people known to be in that cult because even though I want to know what happened to me I’m still scared of parrot man to the point that a potential picture of him is too much for me atm.
11. He was prepared to do it.
A friend’s friend, we were high and coming home from a party in Thailand. We took a tuktuk home and he asked the tuktuk driver to drop us off into the jungle and that we’d walk home to get sober. He then got on to talk about how no one would care if we’d kill him, and started detailing different ways of getting rid of his body and the tuktuk.
I just told the driver to “duck the jungle” and to drop us off at the hotel. That man scared the living hell out of me, I remember there was something about his eyes. They somehow made me feel like I was staring down an animal, not a man.
10. The feeling is mutual.
I got rear ended outside New York City in a brand new car in busy rush hour traffic in 1995 or so. I had recently been in a hit and run so the first thing I did was look in the rear view and write down the plate number. It was either a black caddy or a town car.
The passenger was an older man wearing sunglasses, wearing a fedora and smoking a cigar. The driver was a huge man who could have been a linebacker. As I was writing down the color/make/model of his car the driver knocked on my window. I got out. He seemed annoyed. No damage to my car, little to his.
He looked at me and said we are all ok here right? I thought better to go along with that. I said we should probably file a police report and exchange information. He said no, we are ok. Normally I would have insisted but I had a pretty good idea of what type I was dealing with. He said “OK, all set then” and I said ok and went back to my car and he said WAIT.
I almost pissed my pants. I turned around and he grabbed my right hand, shook it, looked right into my eyes and said “May we never meet again”. I went back into my car and drove off as fast as I could and kept checking my rearview every so often for that car. Never saw it again but shook for a while on my drive to my destination.
9. Dark is an understatement.
Student of mine would come to office hours and ask me about nihilism and human life and prostitution. I was a grad student teaching ethics and philosophy so it was not as irrelevant/weird as it sounds, but he was really into it and had this kind of unhinged look in his eye, sort of staring off. I couldn’t exactly keep him from office hours but I distanced myself through my responses enough so that he eventually stopped showing up. Creeped me out.
Anyways, about six months after the semester ended I read in the news that he murdered his parents, shot at the responders, and then committed suicide. Pretty dark.
8. He just wanted to practice his English?
Long ago, in a small, Eastern European country that shall remain nameless, I was out to eat at a fancy restaurant with some locals, when they suddenly went very silent as a small, well-dressed man sat down at our table without invitation.
He proceeded to politely ask me about America in broken English. It wasn’t until we left the restaurant that one of the locals quietly said he was one of the top mob bosses in the country, a murderer among other things.
7. Sometimes you just feel it.
I’m not easily scared of people. But there was this one guy I met. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but he absolutely creeped me the hell out.
I mentioned him to a neighbor. The neighbor was at a complete loss for words. Trying to figure out what to say and how to say it. It turned out that the creepy guy I met had molested that neighbor’s kids.
6. Very disturbing.
I was overseas, and had just been smoking weed in a room I had rented in town when another renter had a chat with me on the porch. Turned out he was a cop, but not interested in small fish like me, but he had smelled the weed.
Then he takes out some polaroid’s of people he had shot in the line of duty. He had a pocketful, dead bodies, blood, his own little trophy collection. Anyway, managed to stay cool with him and was more careful about my smoking.
5. More than just annoying.
I thought he was just annoying. He was a good friend’s neighbor. I had only met him once before. The friend and I went going to take his boat out, dude saw us and invited himself along
Five minutes after launching, he’s working on his second beer and yells a racial slur at two guys fishing. Later on, we pull up to the beach, some people in a giant boat ask if we can move farther away. They wanted to set up a tent. Words are exchanged and he yells that he’ll kill them. The called the cops and he ran into the wooda because he had warrants.
He comes back after the cops leave. My buddy vowed never to let him hang out again.
This proves pretty easy to do because that winter, he gets drunk, gets into and argument with his 21 year old son and shoots him dead.
4. Think better of it the next time.
I haven’t met many scary people, but one comes to mind.
I was providing a small jail ministry for guys who wanted to attend at our local low-security law enforcement center. If the opportunity ever arose, and the jailers were cool with it, I’d try to spend a few minutes with guys who wanted to just talk one-on-one about their past, etc..
There was this new guy who’d been recently jailed for some petty drug crime, but it was very clear he was NOT from our area (small rural scandinavian town), as he was covered with gang-banger tattoos. This aside, he was actually very friendly, thoughtful, and pleasant to talk with.
After a few minutes of chatting he seemed to be letting down his tough-guy image demeanor, and he began talking to me about some of the really bad mistakes he’d made growing up. Which apparently included possibly murdering at least a few rival gang members.
It then suddenly occurred to me that I was locked inside a very small room with a very large, very strong man, who if he wanted to, could’ve hurt or killed me way before any authorities would be able to help me.
I wasn’t really “scared” per se’, but in hindsight it was kind of a thoughtless situation to put myself in. To look at, he was a pretty scary guy. Sad thing is, I think he was just sort of forced to grow up that way. I truly hope he’s doing better today.
3. Somewhere inside, you know.
When I was much younger, I was a regular at a local nightclub. My girlfriends and I were there one night, and we met this guy. Something about him just gave me the willies. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, he was actually quite attractive but something about him just…scared the f*ck out of me.
I was pretty naïve when I was younger, and I generally couldn’t read people for sh%t. I also didn’t know at the time that the teardrop tattoo next to his eye meant that he had been in prison. I just knew there was something…off.
Anyway, he creeped me out so much that I made up an excuse to get the f*ck away from him, told my friends he gave me the creeps, and we all avoided him for the rest of the night.
The very next night, my friends and I went back to the club, and we were chatting with the manager and she said “A guy raped a girl out in the parking lot last night and beat the crap out of her. Fortunately the cops were called and they caught and arrested him. Y’all just….be careful out in the parking lot…okay?”
My friend asked her “So, what did the guy look like?” She said “Well, he had a teardrop tattoo, so this won’t be his first trip to the pen, I guess.”
2. It’s the lack of predictability.
It wasn’t so much scary as much as the circumstance was terrifying.
My wife (who was pregnant at the time) and I were standing behind some guy in a coffee shop. This guy was struggling with psychosis or drugs (possibly both), and he was berating the Barista. I stepped up and told him that this was inappropriate and he screamed “I just want some fucking boiling water”. Apparently that’s only for paying customers, so I offered to get him some (he was holding a cup of Mr. Noodles)… he mumbled something to me and ran away.
My wife and I placed our order and moved to the side. While we were waiting for our food, the guy comes back and starts running directly at me and my wife while kicking over chairs. Full on adrenaline rush… In an instant, I’m ready for a fight to the death because there’s no fucking way he’s getting anywhere near my pregnant wife unless I’m dead.
Fortunately he stopped about 10 feet in front of me and started screaming about how the whole world is bullshit so I asked him if he needed help. He stopped yelling, stared at me, blinked, mumbled something and ran away.
I’m so glad he stopped. I hate fighting and you never know how guys like that are going to behave… or what weapons they’re concealing.
1. It would me, too.
My brother was on the children’s ward when Beverly Allitt killed her last patient. I remember seeing her at the time. Her eyes have always been dead to me.
My friend later worked in the prison she was put in and she had a swarm of cronies around her doing her bidding all day. It always creeps me out that I saw her before she was jailed.
I honestly hope I never meet someone that makes me feel this way.
If you have, share the story with us down in the comments.
