18 'Let's Not Meet' Stories That'll Make You Fear Strangers

From Redditor /u/POTUSKNOPE:

I have a lot of weird encounters outside my office on my smoke breaks, but I think this one takes the cake, even with how anticlimactic it was.

Today I was sitting on the wall outside my building smoking and messing around on my phone. I had probably been sitting there for about two minutes without looking up when I finally do and notice a guy on the corner about 20 feet away staring intently at me. He’s hunched over facing me in the classic zombie pose wearing a large coat, a surgical mask and gloves. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, but it was day time and the area is relatively populated so despite being the only people on the street, I wasn’t too worried.

I went back to looking at my phone, but kept discreetly glancing in his direction to see if he was still there. He didn’t move or stop looking at me for probably another minute of a half, just sunken shoulders with his unblinking eyes pointed directly at me over his mask.

Finally I notice an older man walking towards us and my cigarette is almost finished so I assume worst comes to worst, this guy will be near if anything happens. I glance back at my phone and hear what I assume are the older man’s footsteps approaching.

Before I have a chance to look up, the surgical zombie is sitting within an inch of me on the wall. I’m a polite girl so I give him a vague smile while my inner self and personal space are screaming at me to get up and leave. He asks me for a cigarette, so I give him one and he just continues to sit there with it unlit. I can’t fight my manners so I ask him if he needs a light and he gives me a gloved double-thumbs up and stares at me. I ask him if that meant he had one, to which he responds with another double thumbs up. I assume that was him saying he did so I turn back to my phone planning on taking one more drag before getting up to leave. He then says “yes, I need one” so I give him my lighter. He hands it back and I put my smoke out and stand up. He then begins laughing, like full belly laughing. I didn’t really know how to respond so I tell him to have a nice day and walk into my building.

To be honest, I’ve never really had a fear of people, and I can’t say this is the first time I've had someone has done something like this, but the mask and gloves really added to the absurdity of the situation.

From Redditor /u/Furstenfeld:

It's Friday night at around 8.45pm. The little one's in bed, and I'm chilling with some friends online, gaming. There's a loud bang and I'm instantly freaking out, due to having my home, my safe place, invaded by some creeper twice in the past three months.

I turn the volume on my computer down, trying my best to come up with excuses. Oh, it was the neighbors doing something. Who in their right minds would try to break into my house when they can see that I'm awake? Front outdoor light on, lounge light on.

It's quiet for a while, so I return to playing the game and talking to my friends. That's when I hear rustling. I think it's coming from the game, despite the volume being super low, but to be on the safe side I turned the sound on the computer off completely. The rustling's still there.

At this point, I think it might be that annoying pest possum. The banging could have been it jumping onto the garage roof, and now it was snuffling around outside the leaves, searching for some food. As I said earlier, who would try to trespass when they could clearly see someone was home? If they did trespass, why would they be doing so so loudly?

I wanna say it put me at ease, but it didn't. Fast forward half an hour and the noises have stopped, and my cat's begging me to be let outside. Little b*stard. (I love him, really.)

I hate opening doors / curtains / windows at night. Paranoia at [its] finest. But tonight I had a reason to be paranoid, at least. I kept the chain lock on the door and let the fat fuzzball squeeze out, and had a bit of a peek through the crack, seeing if anything was amiss on my front lawn.

Nothing out of the ordinary, so I lock the door and head back to the lounge. Five minutes later, someone tries the door handle. Finding it locked, I hear a laugh, and they start scratching on the glass as I frantically grab my phone and call the police.

Whoever it was had left by the time they answered the phone, and police couldn't find evidence that anyone had been on the property. They did a sweep of the neighborhood, but couldn't find anyone on the streets, either.

Whoever you are, I'd say let's not meet, but I'm pretty sure you're the same person who came the other two times. And I'm fairly certain that that person is my ex. So, Mr ex. If it IS you. Smile for the cameras next time you come around. They just arrived in my mailbox.

From Redditor /u/cheeseshrice1966:

I've stalked this sub for a while, and couldn't decide whether or not to post mine but I'm feeling brave on a Monday.

It was a very long time ago- back in 1973. I know it was summer, I was 6, and we were living on Monica Lane in Madison, WI.

Thing is, I sort of recalled it but never put two-and-two together until a few months ago when I was talking to my mom who went into great detail.

I was a very gregarious child; outgoing, extroverted, friends with anyone. It was at the time a middle class neighborhood, and 3 houses down from ours, on the same side of the street, was a huge park.

My mom was a nurse and my dad was a salesman, but mom worked 2nd shift at Merriter, while my dad worked days. I rarely had a babysitter, only if they went out for dinner or a movie. But they did go out often and there were always older kids in the neighborhood to babysit.

One sitter who I really liked lived a few blocks or so away, and down the street a little bit. Vicky had babysat a few times before that and it was pretty uneventful. She'd play games with me, and do my hair, play dress-up, pretty basic stuff.

So anyhow, one day I had gone with friends down to the park. I remember there was a ball field at the time, and a sandlot next to the field. My friends wanted to play on the monkey bars, but I wanted to play in the sand. I looked at the sand box and my babysitter Vicky was standing there. I told my friends I was going down to to the sandbox and ran off.

We played in the sand, building a castle, and then She asks me if I wanted to go get something cold to drink. It was stifling hot, and I of course said yes. So she takes my hand and we start walking to her place.

She starts telling me about her puppies and asking if I want to play with them. Of course I get giddy and now can't wait to get to her house. This was where my memory had stopped and after my mom told me what happened, the rest of it flooded back.

My mother just happened to be talking to my sister and I about some of the places we lived and we got to Monica Lane. I told her I remembered the park and how big it seemed, and she asks me if I remember being kidnapped.

I immediately thought she was kidding and then the look on her face told me otherwise.

She said it was around 5 in the afternoon and one of my friends had come to the door to ask me to come back outside, sure that I had gotten bored and walked back home. When my mom checked the house, she realized I wasn't there and (7 months pregnant with my sister) sprints to the park, screaming my name.

After asking several kids if they'd seen me with no clue, she went to the ball field and asked the older boys if they'd seen me.

One of the boys (she guessed around 14) said that he'd seen a younger woman playing with a girl that fit my description in the sand and walk off in a general direction and that was all he knew.

My mom ran across the street to one of the houses, and asked to use their phone and called the police. By the time the police got there, my dad had come home and some of the neighbors were trying to help my mom.

So there's this search party out looking for me, screaming my name and knocking on doors. The police had gone back to the park to ask the boys if they knew who had been with me and if they knew who she was.

Between the boys and the neighbors, they had deduced who it was that had led me off, but I have no idea how, honestly.

The police and the entourage go to her home (she lived with her parents but they weren't home) and knock on the door. She came to the door and told them she hadn't seen me, and that she'd been home all day.

The police asked to come in and for some reason she said okay. They went through the house, and went to the basement and found me. That's what my mom knew and then I remembered. It was literally like a flood gate had opened and I started crying.

At 6 you sort of trust everyone, and she'd been in our home. I never got a bad feeling from her and my parents didn't, either. But when we walked into her house I remember that cold, holy f*ck feeling washing over me and getting very worried. I remember starting to cry and saying I wanted to go home, over and over.

She takes me into her kitchen and gets me a glass of water and a tissue. I hear dogs barking, and next to the kitchen is an open stairway the goes down and where the barking was coming from.

She starts trying to cajole me into going downstairs- telling me there's all sorts of toys and games. I reluctantly agree and she grabs my hand to head down the stairs. The dogs are going nuttier and I start screaming.

At this point Vicky is getting f*cking bizarre. She's screaming at me to "SHUT THE F*CK UP!! IF YOU DONT SHUT UP I WILL THROW YOU IN THE CAGE WITH THE DOGS AND THEY WILL EAT YOU!! SHUT UP!!" Dragging me down the stairs and still screaming.

I was scared out of my mind. I remember crying so hard I was hyperventilating, and I am screaming so hard I'm not making sounds. Vicky then flips a switch and starts being syrupy sweet, trying to calm me down. She tells me that she was just playing a game and tells me she wants to play hide and seek.

She must have been relatively skilled at calming me down because the next thing I know, I hear knocking on the door upstairs and I wasn't crying. The houses were all the same sort of tract houses that Sears used to sell, not huge but not small, but you could hear everything at any spot in the house.

I keep hearing the knocking and she tells me that it's her friends. They're coming to play hide and seek!! She convinced me to let her put a piece of masking tape over my mouth so I wouldn't make a sound, and lifted me into this big wooden box next to the kennel. She put a big pile of blankets over me, and told me to be really quiet so they didn't find me.

The whole time the dogs were going batsh*t but when she calmed me down, they calmed down, too. They still looked incredibly mean but they were no longer frothing at the mouth, and only slightly growling. Until the knocking started.

I remember scrunching in there, confused. Still scared and convinced that the dogs were going to get out and eat me. I was crying again and hyperventilating. I remember taking the tape off my mouth because I couldn't breathe, but remembered I needed to be quiet because I was afraid what she'd do if I screamed.

I laid in that smelly box next to a big bag of dog food, sweating to hell, tears rolling down my face. I sort of pushed the blankets to the side but only enough so that I could pull them back over me when someone came. I recall thinking about my dad and wondering if he'd come find me.

All of a sudden I hear what sounds like adults yelling my name. They come down the stairs and the dogs are going batsh*t again. Over and over men are yelling my name and then I hear a man say 'if you don't shut those f*cking dogs up I will!!'

I was in a large storage box (like a carpenters tool box type of thing) with tape hanging off my mouth, when they opened the lid. I remember a very nice man asking me my name and if I was okay. I don't remember answering him in anything other than screams and tears and grabbing his neck so hard my dad had to practically pry me off of him.

I remember my parents taking me to the hospital to be checked out and that's all I really remember.

Mom said that Vicky was found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and last she knew was in prison but couldn't remember when the last time was she had heard anything. We moved from the area shortly thereafter, and I haven't been back since.

I do know that mom said that her parents were odd but that they didn't know them. She had met Vicky from neighbors that had used her as a babysitter, and had never heard of anything bad and that I always seemed happy with her.

She lived in the general neighborhood but it would have been two blocks over and [one] block down. Mom said they never picked her up, she always walked over. When they'd get home they'd drive her home but never noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Mom and dad had only met her parents when they came to the door to ask for forgiveness; that Vicky hadn't meant to do anything bad, and was a good girl. Mom said my dad picked up her dad by the shirt and told him that if they ever came on our property again, he'd kill them.

I remember her name and sort of what she looked like, but would have no idea if she walked up to me who she is.

From Redditor /u/summer2502:

The other day at work we were basically told to look out for ourselves and others, wait for a security guard etc. Now this was a normal thing for the suburb we live in but it was still a bit strange. My friend from night fill told me why.

Their friend and co worker finished up at around 12 that morning and was approached by this guy when he was at his car. The guy looked pretty normal, trakkies and all, and gave him an envelope claiming there were free Fringe tickets inside. (side note for clarification: Fringe is an art festival, like music and comedy and dancing etc. in the CBD) There was some sort of white powder on the ticket but he just assumed it was cocaine or something (again not uncommon in this area) so just grabbed it, planning to throw it out later because it was probably counterfeit. Not wanting to spark any conflict, it's unpredictable around here especially at 12am.

His mates came out around 12:15 to see him with something like burns on his hands (where he touched the powder) and felt like he was burning on the inside and couldn't breathe properly, luckily he was still conscious and told them to take him to the hospital which luckily wasn't that far away.

They got there and practically everyone that came into contact with him felt like they were burning under their skin and were all having breathing difficulties within minutes. They had to call HAZMAT firies and everyone was decontaminated, luckily everyone is okay.

From a former Redditor:

Around 9pm, I heard the tell-tale rumble that meant the forecasted storm was about to start. I couldn't recall if I had rolled up my car window when I got home, so I went out to check. It was already dark out, and I live in a part [of] town that isn't big on street lights so at night sometimes it's hard to even stay on the sidewalk without crashing into bushes. The dumpsters are about 200-300 feet from my car [on] our U-shaped street, tucked into a corner that backs into trees and a small creek. I live on the back of the building, so once I round that corner you can't see me from my car nor the dumpsters.

I got out to my car. As I rounded that corner, I could see what looked like a flash light in the dumpster. Weird, but not alarming as there are a lot of teenagers and younger boys who f*ck around in that corner of the parking lot. My window was down a bit, as I was rolling it up I hear a clattering sound from the dumpsters. I turn to see someone climbing out of the dumpster and start shining the light in the other dumpster. My daughter had left her window down too, so I walked around to her door and rolled her window up too. I slammed her door shut a bit harder than I meant to, and since I was then facing the dumpsters I could see the dumpster man freeze and swing his light in my direction. He immediately switched it off and right as I started to walk back inside, he started full on sprinting toward my direction.

My usually sedentary [butt] has never moved so fast as I noped back on to the sidewalk and to the back of the building. I quietly opened and shut my door, locked in hopes that with eight apartments back here, he wouldn't know where I was. Or maybe he was running for reasons entirely unrelated to me. Or maybe he was just f*cking with me and is now having a laugh with his friends about the lady he just scared the sh*t of. Whatever it was, I'm sure as sh*t not getting any sleep tonight.

From a Reddit enthusiast with an uncouth username that shall go unmentioned:

This past weekend, my soon-to-be-wife Alexia and I had just settled down for a night of movies, pizza and cuddling. We live in a residential area right outside of town; our home situated right across the street from a Presbyterian church with a large cemetery behind it. Most of our neighbors don't own pets but there's one in particular across the street and downwards a bit who owns perhaps the loudest, most annoying dog to ever exist. Quite an annoyance on a night like tonight but luckily it was quiet for the entire evening.

It's around a quarter after 10:00 PM and we're lying down watching a film in our living room when the loudest dog on earth begins to go off. Unfortunately, there's nothing much we can do, except maybe confront our neighbor or file a noise complaint but who wants to be the neighbor that does that?

After about five minutes, I get up off the couch and decide to walk over to our neighbor's home and say something about the dog. As I headed outside and made it to their driveway, unfortunately, I noticed that the neighbor wasn't home; their only car not there. I decided anyway to walk up to the door and ring the bell. After a minute of no one answering, I gave up and headed back towards home.

I noticed that Alexia had stepped outside and was looking on towards the direction of the barking. I told her that no one was home and that we should either ignore it or finally file a complaint. No one should have to deal with a loud dog at night, especially if you're trying to unwind after a long day of work or are trying to sleep.

Alexia and I [head] back inside for a bit and finally after about ten minutes the dog ceases to bark. Alexia and I exhaled and laughed a bit before continuing our film. But of course, not long after that, the dog starts up again. This time, it sounded vicious.

I got up, went outside and approached our neighbor's fenced-off backyard and saw the dog, who must've heard or saw me coming. It stopped barking, walked up to me and began to pant in the cute way dogs do. I chuckled and said the dog's name, to which he looked at me and sat down. Such a good animal, even if he's so loud.

I then heard something that sounded like somebody walking through leaves coming from behind me and to the right. I turn around to see somebody looking at me from behind a gravestone in the cemetery. The dog must've heard this as well, as it sprung up and began to bark in the direction of the gravestone.

I looked on as the person continued staring in my direction and as the dog continued to bark. I looked towards my house where I saw Alexia standing near her car, looking at me with a confused look on her face. I looked in horror as I saw the person reveal himself from behind the gravestone; his forehead and cheek was stained red with blood, dripping down off of his chin. In his hand was some sort of dagger.

The dog began to go ballistic as the person took a few steps in our direction before stopping. I turned to the dog, then back at my home. Alexia, who was still outside, yelled out to me what was wrong. I told her to call the police. She said "why, the dog?" to which I replied "he's f*cking armed." Probably confused, Alexia went inside to grab her phone as I continued to watch on as the person now began to back off, the dog now going berserk. It was going to take a bit of time for someone to reach our home, so I readied myself to go into self defense as I watched the man finally turn around and walk away towards the back of the cemetery and towards the woods.

When the police finally arrived, the person was long gone and I was stuck there explaining to a couple of skeptical officers about my encounter. They didn't seem to take me that seriously but still investigated the area as I explained to Alexia about the person I saw.

When the police left after finding no trace of anyone, Alexia and I didn't feel much better. We locked our doors and windows and I decided to call our neighbors to fill them in on everything before heading back to continue our movie night in spectacular fashion: with the Exorcist.