True Scary Stories | Real Encounters with Pure Fear - Scary Stories from Bad Vibes

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
I am twenty one and a female. I usually try
not to go to the laundrymat at night, but with
it getting dark so early, that's basically impossible. That was
the situation tonight. I got there and I was alone
except for one guy smoking outside and a couple of
employees cleaning stuff. Usually I sit in my car and wait,

(00:25):
but it was super cold, so that wasn't really an option.
I brought along some homework and sat on one of
the chairs. The chairs are arranged in a group of twos,
so I put my backpack on the seat next to me.
I could see this guy staring at me through the window.
There were still employees around, though, so I wasn't too worried.

(00:47):
A while later, he came in and walked around for
a while before deciding to approach me. He told me
I was being rude by taking up two chairs because
what if I want to sit there? I basically told
him that there are other chairs and I can move
to a different seat if there was something special about
these ones. He walked off and kept walking in circles

(01:08):
around the building. A while later, the employees left. He
came up to me again and pointed to my sweatshirt
pocket and said, you can keep that in your car.
You know you don't need to hear. What was in
my pocket pepper spray. He was telling me to get
rid of my pepper spray. I told him I didn't

(01:28):
feel like it and would be keeping it. At this point,
I was pretty eager to just get the fuck out
and might have just got into my car and pulled
some laps around the block if not for the fact
that the drivers don't lock and I was paranoid by
him looking through my stuff. Luckily, he decided to smoke
again and I escaped while he was gone. I still

(01:56):
don't know this man's name. I don't know what he wanted.
All I know is if I hadn't trusted my gut
that night, I might not be here talking about it.
This happened three years ago on a two lane road
that cuts through about twenty miles of nothing. No houses,
no street lights, just tall grass and the occasional billboard.

(02:18):
I've driven this route one hundred times before, usually after
late shifts. I hated it, but it was the fastest
way home. That night, around one am, I noticed a
pair of headlights in my rear view mirror. No big
deal at first. Cars use this road all the time,
but this one came up behind me fast, too fast,

(02:38):
then hovered inches away from my bumper that he was
trying to push me. I tapped my brakes slightly, just
enough to flash the lights a warning to back off,
but he didn't. Instead, the car swerved once to the left,
once to the right, almost like it was deciding which
side to ram me from. That's when every hair in

(02:58):
my body stood up. Something was wrong, something was very wrong.
I sped up, He sped up. I slowed down, he
slowed down. He was matching me exactly. For the first time,
I realized I couldn't see in his car. His headlights
were so blindly bright that when shield looked like a

(03:19):
black void. Whoever he was he had the advantage. He
could see me, but I couldn't see any of him.
About ten minutes down the road, a small turnout a
gravel shoulder big enough for one car. I thought maybe
I should pull over let him pass. But something in
my stomach twisted so hard it felt like a physical warning,

(03:41):
do not stop. The car behind me suddenly accelerated and
pulled up beside me. We were side by side on
a narrow, two lane road with no guard rails. I
kept my eyes forward, gripping the wheel so hard my
fingers went numb. The other driver drifted closer and closer,
practically nudging me towards a ditch. For a split second,

(04:04):
I glanced over. The driver was leaning across the passenger seat,
staring straight at me. Not angry, not confused, just staring
like he was waiting to see what I would do.
He had this sort of crooked smile, but it was calm.
I floored it. I had an old, crappy car, but

(04:25):
he gave me just enough to pull ahead. He fell back,
then searched after me again. It felt like it went
on forever, me skating in the road for turn offs,
him tailgating me like a predator that wasn't in a hurry,
like he was enjoying it. Finally, I saw a sign.
I'd never been so happy to see it in my life.

(04:47):
The old Creek gas station one mile ahead. I didn't
know if it was open, didn't care, lightnment, witnesses, cameras,
maybe people. I cut into the turn lane, hard, tired, screeching.
He tried to follow, but I think he misjudged the
angle his car fish tailed on the gravel, which gave

(05:09):
me a few precious seconds. I flew towards the gas station,
praying to see anyone but darkness. To my relief, the
gas station was lit and there was a pickup parked
by the front door. A man in a reflective vest
stood beside it, drinking from a thermost. I don't think
I've ever been so relieved to see a stranger in

(05:30):
my life. I pulled up fast, jumped out, and yelled
something I don't even remember what. The man in the
vest looked confused, then concerned, and walked towards me. When
I turned to point at the road, there was nothing,
no headlights, no engine noise. The guy stayed with me

(05:52):
for about fifteen minutes, long enough for my hands to
stop shaking. He offered to follow me home, but I
told him I'd be fine somehow with another human nearby.
The whole thing felt distant, like maybe I imagined it.
But as I walked back to my car, I noticed something.
There were fresh scratches across my bumper. I hadn't even

(06:14):
heard when it happened. I reported it. Of course, nothing
came of it. They asked me if I remember the
maker model of the car. I didn't just the headlights,
just the face. Every now and then, when I'm driving
at night, I check the river mirror and see headlights,

(06:34):
and just for at split second, it all comes back
to my mind. Though I carry mace now. This happened
to me in twenty twenty one. There's a bar in
a small Iowa town that I absolutely adore. All the

(06:56):
staff knew me well, and I was a frequent regular,
even if I was there just to chill. I was
out late one night. Tap water is bad, so I
refuse to drink it. If I wasn't gonna drink it,
I refuse to give it to my cat. There's a
water fountain at the park where the water was much

(07:17):
more drinkable, so I saved some core water bottles from
when I was buying normal water from the gas station.
I had to pass by the bar to get there.
It was a Friday night and the bar was bumping.
I just had to go in. There were some men
who were basically there all the time. They were there

(07:39):
that night. After the bar closed, I made my way
to the park to collect water. They had left before
I did. The park was across the street and a
block down to the right. The three of them were
sitting there and smoking. Super drunk. They drank beer like
its water. They were sitting on some stairs at the

(08:02):
entrance of a business directly across the street. I went
past them and they asked, who are you. Are you
new to town. I didn't think much of it. It's
a super small Iowa town. Everyone knows everyone. I told
them yes, I was in fact new in town. Then

(08:24):
they started asking me personal questions, and I lied to
them about everything, mainly about I had a partner because
they found me attractive. In the middle of the conversation,
there was a screaming cat somewhere. It was loud. I
entered the convo and told them I really needed to
go and get home to my cat. Saw. I went

(08:46):
into the park to get the water it was pushing
for I am. At this point, it was dark. The
street lights were soft, warm orange, so there was little
light pollution. You can barely see anything. While I was
getting water, I looked across the street and saw one
of the men duck behind a parked car like they

(09:07):
were trying to go inside of it. The car never
made any noise or flash to indicate someone entered. I
noted this, but didn't think too much of it. They
were drunk, probably being weird. I left the park and
suddenly another one of the guys was sitting alone, closer
to me from the other two guys sitting on a

(09:29):
different set of stairs. He tried to make conversation again,
but I kept walking. I again noted this, but still
didn't think much of it, but I didn't know where
the third man was. Suddenly, the night shift cop I
was acquaintances with pulled up to me and asked if
I was screaming for help and if the men were

(09:51):
bothering me. I wasn't putting two and two together. I
told him no. Several people called in at some one
was screaming, but it was just a cat. There were
cops everywhere. He carried on and said to call him
if I needed anything. I kept walking home. I crossed

(10:13):
the street and pretty much slipped straight into pitch darkness.
Once I was back onto the residential area, then I
heard someone behind me gops. I turned around. The same
guy by the car did the same exact thing before.
There was a third guy on the other side of
the street. I walked faster. Then I heard some clicking

(10:36):
like they were calling a dog. It was the car guy.
Then I see the other man in the middle of
the road, goingsps. They started walking faster towards me. It
finally clicked. I bolted and took a different route, hiding
in the dark and waiting for a while before running home.

(10:59):
I never saw them again after that, which was abnormal.
I also asked the bartender if they had ever acted
like that before. She said no. I don't know why
they never came back to the bar. Maybe they did
after I moved again or something. I'm a twenty one

(11:23):
year old male. Back in March this year, I attended
this non academic event on campus with my friends. Most
of the attendees were humanities and art students, so my
friends and I stood out a bit because we're only
computer science majors. There After the event, we went down

(11:45):
to the library a few floors below to work on
our coding assignments. While I was working, I noticed someone
staring at me from about twenty five feet away. I
recognized him from the event, an art student judged't by
his college ideally inured. At first, I didn't think much
of it, but his eyes were locked in me in

(12:06):
the entire time, only looking away when I glanced back.
This went on for the full hour we were in
the library. The second encounter happened during class. He kept
peeking through the classroom door as he walked by. At
first I tried to ignore it, but he passed the

(12:27):
door multiple times enough to distract me from the lecture.
What made even strangers. Our students usually have their classes
in a different building, nowhere near the Engineering and Computer
Studies building where my class was held, so it didn't
make sense for him to be there. I thought that
would be the end of it. But the third encounter

(12:48):
happened after my gym class. I went to the restroom
to change and I noticed he was walking behind me
in the hallway. I ignored it went into a cubicle.
While I was changing, I realized my sweaty shirt, which
hung on the cubicle door, had disappeared. Turns out the
creep had followed me, taking my shirt, sniffed it, and

(13:12):
dropped it on the floor when he bolted out the
moment I tried to confront him. That was my breaking point.
I decided to file complaint with the university's disciplinary office,
but when I went there. The following week, I was
told that he had been expelled the day before. Apparently
I wasn't his only victim. He had been kicked out

(13:33):
for sexually assaulting another male student from a different college.
Five years ago, I was working the night shift at
a twenty four hour diner off a small highway. Anyone
who's worked night shift snows the rhythm, dead quiet after

(13:54):
midnight regularly could come in and keep to themselves, and
long stretches where there's absolentce no one. Around two am,
a guy walked in wearing a stained gray hoodie, hoot
he up, head down, no eye contact, nothing that would
scream danger itself, just the kind of person you get
on that shift. But something about him set off every

(14:18):
alarm in my body instantly. No fear exactly, more like
a warning. He didn't sit, didn't look around, just look
where the bathroom was, and disappeared down the hallway, though
I didn't hear the door open or close, and that
struck me as odd. A couple of minutes went by,
then a few more, long enough that the cook, Louise,

(14:41):
leaned out of the kitchen and asked if everything was okay.
Before I could answer, the guy reappeared, but his entire
demeanor had changed. The tired shuffle was gone. His posture
was rigid, focused. His left hand was buried deep into
his pocket, like he was holding something. He didn't have
to say anything for me to understand what was happening.

(15:04):
The tone alone was enough. He was robbing us. He
made me put my phone on the counter. Louise did
the same. The guy stayed calm the whole time, which
honestly made it worse. He didn't sound angry or frantic,
just kind of prepared. He took me into the dry
storage room. This part still catches out my throat when

(15:27):
I think about it. I kept waiting for him to
lock the door behind us, but he didn't. Instead, he
stood by, listening, pacing, occasionally checking his watch, like he
was waiting for something on a schedule. I remember studying him,
his shoes, his breath, the way he touched his front
pocket of the hoodie. At one point he pulled out

(15:51):
a folded paper. I saw it for only a split
second before he tucked it away. But the handwriting was frantic,
like someone wrote it quickly or in a panic. He
wasn't on drugs. People would like to assume that, but
he was way too controlled and too deliberate. He truly
seemed like he was following a plan. Being in the

(16:14):
storage room with him felt unreal, not dramatic or cinematic,
just horribly quiet. I remember thinking how weird it was
that a hostage situation could feel so mundane. After a while,
all I could focus on was the sound of the
freezer and his footsteps on the concrete floor. About forty

(16:34):
minutes in, he froze, tilted his head like he heard
something outside that I couldn't. He opened the door crack
and listened. Moments later, a pickup rumbled into the lot.
I believe a regular pickup. The sound triggered something in
the guy. His breathing sped up for the first time,
not panic, just shifting gears. He made me stay put

(16:58):
and moved me outside. I couldn't see what happened, just
heard the dinner door open and a man call out,
then a thud, then nothing for a few seconds. When
the guy came back into view through the storage doorway,
he had a bag he didn't have before. He untied Lewis.
I never saw him tie him up and took the

(17:20):
money from the register. Everything happened so fast, where like
he rehearsed it before he fully left. He paused out
the front window and stared at them for a second,
like he was checking his reflection, or maybe making sure
no one else was pulling up. Then he was just gone.
No dramatic run, no yelling, just slipped out into the

(17:41):
parking lot. The horror deal lasted a little bit over
an hour, but it felt both shorter and longer at
the same time. The police showed up quick. They searched
the area, pulled footage from the nearby business cameras, which
weren't many. A gas station in a fast food restaurant,
no car description, no prince, nothing on the cameras except

(18:05):
for headlines coming and going. In the police report, I
was marked as detained but unharmed. That struck me for years.
I was there, but not really. I existed in that diner,
but not safely. For the next few months, I couldn't
walk into a room without checking every corner first. I

(18:26):
luckily was able to avoid night shifts completely. The job
never felt the same, and I eventually quit. The thing
that gets me, even five years later, isn't the threat
of fear. It's that the guy wasn't there for me
or Lewis. We were inconveniences obstacles he had to manage
through to get whatever he came for. The list he

(18:47):
carried I still think about it, what else was on
it and if it had anything to do with the
diner at all. This was fall last year. It was
a cool September day and I had rushed out the
door with my little two year old crying in my

(19:08):
arms about not wanting to wear shoes, and locked us
out of the house. My fiance was on a job
close to about forty five minutes away, and my landlord
was out of town. Great. I called my fiance and
he said that he would bring me the key soon.
So my son and I tried to make the best
of it and started to play. We live at the

(19:31):
end of a street, not a dead end, but right
near a stop sign. A man with a backpack started
to walk down the road. Nothing new, we lived in
a rundown part of town. He walked up the road,
and then a little bit while later he comes back.
Then he started this strange pattern, making an L shaped loop,

(19:53):
walking down my street past the stop sign, turning and
doing it again. By the third time, he was staring
at me with a slight smirk. Yet he does it again,
making an l. This gut feeling started to sink. I
was boxed in and I was prepared to toss my
kid over the back fence. I called my neighbor to

(20:16):
have her husband come outside because I was getting nervous.
The man was at the stop sign and was turning
right to do his l At this time, the man
stopped behind a tree, directly blocking him from my line
to sight. I walked to where I could see him,
and he starts pulling something out of his backpack. My

(20:38):
neighbor steps outside at this time. Also We make eye contact,
and the man steps back out from behind the tree
with a hatchet in his hand. He locks eyes with
my neighbor, looks back at my son and I, and
then the man and I both start to run. I
run across the road to my neighbor, pretty much throwing

(20:58):
my son into my neighbor's arms. The man didn't follow
me up the stairs, but he crossed the street too,
hatchet raised only about four feet from me. As I
made it across, he was pacing like he was trying
to work up the nerve. I could feel the energy
from him just grow darker. Scariest shit in my life.

(21:20):
So yeah, mister hatchet man, let's not meet again. When
I was around twelve, I had this group of friends
Ted male eleven, Kelly ten years old female, and Meg
twelve years old female. We all hung out together at

(21:43):
Ted and Kelly's house. They were siblings that Ted was
sort of forced to hang out with us. My sisters
sometimes came along. Nine years old. She was friends with Kelly,
and they tended to follow me everywhere. The end of
the day, ME and Ted were fighting over this begun
when it went off and hit my sister in the back.

(22:04):
She was crying and I made her promise never to
tell my mom or dad. She sat out the rest
of the day while I took the rest of the
group to a spot I had found my other friend Ali.
We used to smoke cigarettes there when I didn't go
to school, but the rest of my friends hated her,
so they never tagged along. The spot was just an

(22:25):
area with two fences with houses on both sides. There
was many many trees and looked like a mini forest
to us. Me and Ali had decorated it with a
broken down table and some chairs we found it on
the street. There was an opening in the middle where
I had brought them, and the stuff from the street
made it feel more homey. We weren't even there for

(22:48):
ten minutes before this lady came out of her house.
At first, we assumed she was a man because she
had her shirt off and we all saw her bare back.
But when she turned around, we all saw her Tatas
we all stayed silent till make stepped on a twig
and blew our cover. The lady started screaming nonsense about

(23:08):
how we were in her yard, which wasn't true because
we were behind the fence. This scaredest enough to figure
we should just go to Ted and Kelly's, so we
left the spot and started walking to their house. Their
house was just down the long fence that blocked the
gun on the other side's lawn. It was a pretty
long fence and we'd take a second to get past it.

(23:30):
But then we heard the sound of a gun shot
and turned around. The lady had grabbed a gun and
shot somewhere random. She looked mad, crazed eyes like your
neighborhood crackhead. The sound of the gun made my ears ring,
and everyone started to run. More shots continued to be fired,

(23:51):
but the way she was holding the gun was wrong,
and her aim was so bad she could have been
trying to catch a bird. Because the fence was it
felt like an eternity. While we were running to hide
at Ted and Kelly's house. That one minute of my
life felt longer than anything I've ever felt before. Nobody
was shot, and nobody said a word as a yank

(24:12):
by now scared sister out of the lawn chair and
rushed everyone inside. Their mother had heard the gunshots and
came to us before calling the police. The police came
and talked to both me and my friends. They arrested
her for child in danger. Man, now that I'm older,
I'm thinking back on it, she definitely was on something,

(24:34):
something super strong. It's been years since that day, and
every time I hear gunshots, I ended up panicking. So
a crazy drug lady, let's not meet

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True Scary Stories | Real Encounters with Pure Fear

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