2 Craigslist Encounters That Took a Dark Turn

Buying and selling online seems harmless—until it isn't.

Story 1: A man meets a Craigslist seller outside a police station for safety. But when the seller claims he’s broken down nearby, the buyer must decide if he should go and help or not.

Story 2: After selling a used keyboard online, a man starts hearing the exact same haunting melody played—again and again. He can't explain how… or who’s playing it now.

These two real Craigslist horror stories will make you think twice before your next meetup or online transaction. 🔔 Subscribe for more real horror stories from the internet, the dark web, and everyday life. ⚠️ Based on true events. Enjoy with the lights off… if you dare.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
A long time ago, I was searching Craigslist and Facebook
marketplace for a new phone. This was back when the
iPhone seven was still popular, so the phone had the
old home button. I came across a listing for a phone.
It was some generic post that said iPhone whatever for

(00:28):
sale for around three hundred dollars. It was a really
good deal for the time, and I remember thinking it
sounded too good to be true. The seller told me
all the details I needed to know. It was factory unlocked,
never opened, and so on. He even sent me a

(00:48):
video of the box still sealed. The guy, whose name
was Melvin, seemed nice and easy to talk to over text.
I got his number and we discussed a pickup point.
His location on the Facebook ad was much closer to me,
but over text he told me he had only been

(01:09):
there that morning and had now gone back about an
hour north. I wasn't thrilled about this, but it was
such a good deal and I didn't want to pass
it up. I started asking around to see if any
of my friends would come with me. Really, I just
wanted to make the hour long drive feel more like

(01:29):
an adventure. My friend Martina actually agreed to come on
the condition that I would buy her food. So Melvin
sent the address of a police precinct about an hour away,
saying he only does deals in police parking lots to
avoid scams. I had no problem with this. It actually

(01:50):
made me feel a little more confident about the whole situation.
I picked Martina up around eight thirty pm and off
we went. Having someone to talk to made the trip
more fun, and it was a Friday night, so afterwards
we planned to go out and do whatever we wanted.
When I got off the highway, we were about ten

(02:11):
minutes away from the precinct. As we drove, we found
ourselves in a very secluded area, lots of wooded spaces,
occasional buildings or houses, and then more woods. When we
got to the police precinct, there was no one visibly
parked in the lot except for empty police cars. We

(02:35):
drove around the building a couple of times but didn't
see anyone. Melvin said he was in a black Ultima,
so I decided to give him a call. He picked
up and told me he was having car issues on
the side of the road and asked if I could
come help him. He sent his location and I checked it.

(02:57):
He was on some random road with nothing on either side,
just the woods. He said he had jumper cables and
asked if I would help jump his car. I guess
I can do that, I said. I mean, we had
already driven an hour and I didn't want to drive

(03:19):
all the way back just for nothing. Martina was shaking
her head the whole time I was on the phone.
Melvin said see you soon and hung up. Martina basically screamed,
no way, this is sketchy. We're going home. I told her,
let's just drive past the location he sent and see

(03:40):
what's up inside. I did agree with her, though it
seemed incredibly sketchy. I was just really upset at the
thought of driving two hours for nothing. So we drove
to the location, and when we got there, we saw
the reflection of car headlights coming up the pitch black road.

(04:03):
As we got closer, I slowed down, and sure enough
it was a black car, but we couldn't see anyone
inside or outside of it. It was too dark. Martina
said we should keep on driving, and I knew it
was the sketchiest thing I'd ever seen. A pitch black

(04:27):
road between two patches of woods, no street lights, no
other cars in sight. It was the perfect place to
break down and have someone with a wad of cash
meet them there. I drove right past it immediately, and
Melvin started calling me over and over. I ignored every

(04:49):
single call. Then he texted me I saw you pass me,
why didn't you stop? And then he texted again, turn,
but I ignored him. Martina tried to be positive. She
just laughed at the situation and said, Okay, you owe

(05:09):
me food. So I looked up the nearest diner and
we stopped there for a bite to eat. It was
a quiet, small place, and we were pretty much the
only people there, even on a Friday night. The waitress
took our order, and then a lone guy in a
hood stepped into the diner and sat at one of

(05:31):
the barstools. He wore a navy blue, dirty looking hoodie,
and he glanced over at Martina and me before looking
straight ahead talking to the lady behind the counter ordering
a coffee. The man kept glancing at our table every minute,

(05:52):
so I whispered to Martina, don't look now, but I
think the guy at the counter might be Melvin. The
waitress brought us our drinks and asked if we were
ready to order. I said we needed a few minutes.
When the lady delivered the man his coffee, he said
thank you, Darlin, and I knew it was Melvin's voice,

(06:15):
or whatever his name really was. I told Martina, that's him.
I waved the server over and whispered for the check.
She asked if something was wrong, and I noticed the
guy looking over at us. I said, yea, we just
wanted the drinks for the road. She quickly returned with

(06:37):
the check. I paid, We chugged our drinks and left
the diner. As we got back to my car, Martina said, oh,
my god, he's getting up. I looked inside the diner
and I saw him heading towards the door. As quickly
as possible, I drove us out of the lot and

(06:58):
sped down the road. Yes, we had noticed a black
car in the parking lot. It could have been the
one we saw on the side of the road, but
I was driving too fast to know for sure. We
got back on the highway and I was speeding for
a while until my tire pressure light came on. I

(07:20):
knew instantly that he had slashed my tire. The pressure
was dropping fast, so I pulled over to the side
of the highway to park. I got out and confirmed
that my tire was in fact slashed. I had to
replace it with a spare, which took about fifteen minutes.

(07:42):
The whole thing was a disaster, But if you're wondering, yes,
I still bought Martina dinner that night. Now we look
back on this as just a crazy story we can
tell people, but it's absolutely terrified thinking about how close
we were to walking right into a trap. I never

(08:16):
thought selling a busted old keyboard on Craigslist would leave
me looking over my shoulder every day. My friends told
me to write this down, not because they think it'll
go viral or anything, but because, as one of them
put it, if it happened to you, it could happen

(08:36):
to somebody else. So this is me doing that. My
name is Stanton, I'm twenty four and I compose music
for local choirs and small productions. It's not glamorous. I
live with a roommate in a decent little duplex outside
the city. Money has always been tight, so I sometimes

(09:00):
sell old music gear online. You'd be amazed by what
people will pay for a beat up mic stand or
a broken synthesizer. A few months ago, I listed a
cheap keyboard on Craigslist. It was missing a key, no
longer had the built in speakers, and the power cord

(09:22):
was held together with electrical tape. I listed it for
twenty five bucks. Nothing special. It was basically clutter at
that point, but I figured it was worth a shot
before throwing it out. The listing had maybe three lines.
Old keyboard, missing a key, no speakers, works with ox out,

(09:45):
local pickup only, nothing fancy. I wasn't trying to upsell
it or make a profit. I just wanted it gone.
I got a few nibbles that first, but they were
all low ballers. One guy asked if I would deliver
it for five dollars. Then around two in the morning,

(10:09):
I got a text is it available still? I'll come now,
I'm close. I was still up editing stems for a
vocal session the next day, so I just replied, still available,
pick up tomorrow. Where are you coming from? I didn't

(10:30):
get an answer for a while, but then probably ten
minutes later, I'll come tonight. I need to use it.
I felt that was weird, but definitely not the weirdest
message I've ever gotten. I said, no, not tonight, but
that I was free anytime. The next day, after six

(10:53):
no response. By the next evening, I'd forgotten all about it.
My roommate and I were watching a movie something Dumb
and Loud on Netflix, and at nine thirty the doorbell rang.
My roommate muted the TV and looked at me with confusion,

(11:14):
and I said, I wasn't expecting anyone. At the door
was a man probably mid forties, tall, pale and very thin.
He had a buzzed head and deep eyebags like he
hadn't slept in days. He wore a long black coat

(11:36):
that looked like a thrifted trench that didn't quite fit right,
and he just stared at me. Uh, you here for
the keyboard, I asked, and he nodded. He didn't say anything.
He just followed me with his eyes as I brought
it out from the hallway and gave it to him,

(11:59):
and then he I have to check that it works.
I reminded him about the speakers and said that he
would need an extra amp or headphones, but I assured
him that it was working. Then he pulled out a
small handheld speaker he brought and connected it to the keyboard.

(12:21):
He played a short tune to test it. It was
maybe six notes, very slow, and for some reason, he

(12:44):
stared at me while he played it, just dead in
the eyes, and that bothered me more than anything. He
didn't say anything when he finished. He didn't smile or
say thank you. He just nodded once, handed me a
lot of cash, scooped up the keyboard, and walked away

(13:07):
down the street. He didn't have a car or a bike.
He just walked away into the night. I closed the door,
and my roommate and I burst out laughing. I said
it was the weirdest sail of the year. But something
was bugging me, not just the guy, but those notes

(13:32):
that he had played. It wasn't a full melody, but
it was like he played it for me, like it
was supposed to have a meaning. But it didn't, at
least not. Then a few days had passed and I

(13:54):
stopped thinking about it much. Then shortly after two a m.
I got a voicemail. I hadn't even noticed that a
call came through, just suddenly the notification one new voicemail
and the message was that tune, those exact same six notes.

(14:28):
I tried to call the number back, but the call
would not go through, so I went to message him
on Craigslist, but his entire profile and our messages were
gone deleted. That was over two months ago and I
haven't sold anything since. And just this week it happened again.

(14:52):
I was at a small local performance. A friend of
mine conducts a youth choir and invited me to hear
their spring program. It was all upbeat, modern stuff, lots
of group harmonies, feel good arrangements. They performed in this
little church gymnasium with awful acoustics and uncomfortable folding chairs,

(15:17):
and there were maybe about forty people in attendance. The
final piece was an arrangement of a folk song. It
was pretty forgettable until the pianist added a short interlude
halfway through six notes, and I stopped breathing. I looked

(15:52):
at the player, a teenage girl, maybe seventeen, just calmly
sitting at the piano following the conductor. I knew she
had no idea what it meant to her. It was
probably just some filler line, her teacher wrote in I
glanced around the audience, but no one else had reacted.

(16:17):
I didn't see the pale man or the black trench
coat or those dead eyes. Yet there were those notes
hidden in plain sight. I waited until after the performance
and found the conductor so I could ask who arranged
that piece. He said it came from an online archive,

(16:40):
a teacher's forum where people swap open source sheet music,
nothing official. I asked if I could see the music,
and there it was, those six notes, written as a
filler bar in the middle of the piano part, just
scrawled there, with no credit, no name. I went home

(17:04):
that night and replayed the voicemail over and over. I
hoped that I would suddenly remember that it was a
common tune that I'd heard before, and it was all
just some weird prank. But now I can't listen to
anything without waiting for that tune, those notes, And I

(17:28):
swear every once in a while I hear it again,
once in a commercial jingle, once hummed by a kid
on the train, once played by a street performer outside
of a target downtown. I've never stopped to ask. I

(17:51):
always just walk away faster. I don't know what it
means or why he played it for me, or it
is spreading, maybe it's nothing, Maybe it is just a melody.
I've never noticed before, and my brain is filling in blanks.

(18:13):
But maybe he's out there dropping it into the world,
one piece at a time.