25 People Talk About The Brutal Incidents In Their Small, Quiet Towns

According to Ask Reddit, small towns can be as scary as big cities.

A small, quiet town
Unsplash / Olivier Guillard

1. A man decapitated his girlfriend and kept her head

“A while ago, circa 2004 maybe, there was a car accident and someone’s head flew out the window. When the cops got there, they were confused because everyone had their head attached. Turns out, one of the guys in the wreck (pretty sure he was killed during the wreck) decapitated his girlfriend, threw her body in the canal and took her head with him for God knows what reason.” — PaleosaurusRex

2. Someone abducted a teen and chopped her up

“About 7 years ago we had a nutcase abduct a 13 year old girl, kill her family, chop them up, put them in trash bags and hide them in a tree like 30 foot up. She was found when the police tracked him down, and raided his house a few days later.

I was staying with my aunt and that morning went out to get donuts and got caught nearly in the middle of it. I was 14ish at the time and she lived less than a block away.” — Atton2

3. Someone murdered a man and cut apart his body

“When I was a teenager, someone murdered a man, cut his body up, and drove it out to that tiny rural town and dumped the pieces down a hillside. The guy who did it wasn’t from the area, because if he had been, he would’ve realized he’d picked the absolute worst place to dump a body. Lots of hunters lived out that way, and since it was the country, they let their dogs roam free. Didn’t take more than a few hours for someone’s beagle to drag home part of an arm. They managed to find most of the body over the next couple of days (they never did find all of it, but assumed other animals got the other bits). The guy got caught and went to prison for it. It was surreal, though, seeing all the cops and news crews out there. The body got dumped about 2 miles away from my house.” — GetLostYouPsycho 

4. A woman shot a baby in the mouth and the mother in the head

“A jealous ex girlfriend hunted down and attempted to abduct the new girlfriend and her baby. When the abduction failed she attempted to kidnap just the baby, when that failed she shot the new girlfriend in the head and the baby in the mouth.” — That_Guy_Maloney

5. He set a woman on fire while she was still alive

“I moved away from the small town but I come back to visit my parents.

About 5-6 years ago a dude beat a 18 year old woman and set her on fire while she was still alive. Took the town 5 days to find her. He then did the same thing to another woman. Took 3 days to find her.” — ViralKira

6. A fugitive took his girlfriend hostage

“My little town has a highway that runs through it, so naturally we get a lot of visitors. Well, a fugitive checked into the one hotel in town. The cops got a tip he was there with his girlfriend, so they decided to pay him a visit. He takes his girlfriend hostage inside the hotel room and has a showdown with the cops. They had to get SWAT teams from a town an hour away. On the third day of the showdown, the SWAT team broke into the hotel and gunned down the fugitive. And my tiny town hasn’t had anything interesting happen since. The entire police force (of like 3 full time officers) were kinda famous for a couple days afterwards in town and my town made the papers in cities that were 2 hours away (a big deal in a small town).” — Saxysaxplayer1

7. A student shot his brother in his sleep

“This year, a student I taught shot his brother in his sleep. Then, dragged his brother’s body into a shed before stealing his brother’s car and going on a joyride. He later returned home to await his mother’s arrival, and, without a hint of remorse or emotion relayed what he had done to his mother.” — trippin_daisies 

8. Someone stabbed an elderly couple to death

“I live in a small town next to a slightly less smaller town. A few years ago someone broke into an elderly couples home to rob them, but somewhere along the way they stabbed them to death. Killed the elderly man and then went for the elderly woman while she was in bed. Really gruesome. No known motive either for the murders.” — Hygge-

9. A man held a decapitated body in his trunk

“Didn’t happen to me, but a few years before I moved to my new village, This guy got pulled over outside our village cafe. Turns out he had a decapitated body in his boot and and head was in a garage around the corner from my house.

Fucked up.” — sfrb93

10. A man was shot in the chest, raped, and left for dead

“There was a guy in his I’d say late 20s who rode his bike EVERYWHERE. He was a good guy never bothered anybody. Smoked pot like nobody’s business and mouthed off but he was still a give you the shirt off my back kind of guy.

One day he comes up missing. His step dad mom sisters everyone is worried. He never left and just didn’t come back. Just wasn’t like him. Nobody knew what happened.

His step dad hears that some one is going around bragging about how he killed him. Step dad tells cops cops do nothing. Step dad finally says either you do something or I will.

Cops bring guy in to question him. He leads them to his body.

Turns out he stopped bike guy and asked if he wanted to go get high. He says sure jumps in the car. He takes him to the woods shoots him in the chest I believe it was, raped him and left him.

Most effed up thing to ever happen in my little back road town.” — goingcrazywith4

11. Two men stabbed and tortured an older man

“Two guys stabbed and tortured an old guy and then threw him in the well… and the guy was alive when they threw him. I knew one of the killers, he was my friend but he went nuts.” — gandolfini_james

12. A man was beaten to death with a shovel

“A man was beaten to death with a shovel by his brother. It’s still the talk of the town 10 years later.” — Reluks

13. A woman’s body was found floating down the river

“My grandfather lives in a very quiet town in Nova Scotia, Canada and in 2012 they found remains of a woman in a hockey bag floating in a river. I know so far they have suspects but I don’t think anyone has been convicted.” — dannyboy6657

14. A man was shot over a disagreement during work

“I lived in a super small town where Walmart was the biggest store and any other major town with a department store was a 45 minute drive. The scariest thing happened to my friend. Her dad was killed at work. He was shot over a disagreement. It was the first murder in like 2 decades.” — xoxomaxine

15. A man had his arm chopped off

“A guy got his hand chopped off after someone attacked him with a samurai sword. He was asleep when he was attacked.” — Nesting_Hen

16. A man was shot to death while jogging

“About 4 years ago, we had an Australian student shot to death while he was jogging. The kids who did it said they were bored and saw him jogging past the house so they decided to shoot him. It made national headlines. It was heartbreaking and disturbing.” — Pinkmeowcats

17. Body parts washed up on the shore in our town

“Lived in a very small town all my life up until last year. Every once in awhile, body parts would wash up on the shore of local elderly woman who were murdered. No one ever found the killer(s).

Lot of drunk drivers, and I almost got hit and kidnapped by one when I was 18. Was running and screaming at them to leave me alone/screaming for someone to help me out/etc. Everyone ignored us.

Oh also, my mom had a stalker who watched over her while she slept and, eventually, started watching over me as a child. One birthday in particular, I was having a party with my friends–I was probably about 8–and my mom suddenly ran out the door. Apparently he was standing at the window watching me and my friends. Eventually she was able to get a restraining order against him, and he moved to the house RIGHT AT THE EDGE of the restraining order. Which was still in town. Tried to do more to prevent being around him, but she finally gave up when she kept being told he was technically abiding by the restraining order and we lived in fear for awhile until we both eventually moved. My dad still lives there though.” — stoochr

18. A bus full of children were kidnapped and held for ransom

“I went to this shitty little farm school and back in the 70’s these dudes kidnapped a bus full of kids and buried them for ransom and shit. Pretty crazy, they all lived though.” — Savage_112

19. A group of kids dug up bodies to play with them

“I don’t live there any more but when I was out in Ohio, there was a group of ‘satanist’ kids that dug up bodies and played with them. One of the women recently killed herself after having been raped and kidnapped by some random dude she met online. She was briefly my roommate in the 90s.” — traceyh415

20. A girl was killed and dropped into a frozen lake

“We have a lot of little coffee stands up here yeah? Baristas are seemingly always getting kidnapped and/or murdered. Just recently a girl was killed and dropped in a frozen lake. They didn’t find her until spring.” — notfeelinthistbh

21. A group of young men murdered an older couple

“My home town is quite small( population of about 1500). During high school, a group of 4 young men (18-25) murdered an older man and his wife over a money dispute I guess. They tied up the husband and burned his wife alive in front of him. After they killed the wife, they hacked him up with an axe. When the cops found out about it, they called the school and made all of the students and faculty go home. This was particularly scary because neither of my parents were home during the day. I was home with my two little sisters who were in elementary and middle school at the time, and both of them were absolutely terrified because the murderers were still out there. They ended up catching the four men later that day. Another thing weird about the situation was talking to my teachers the days following the indecent. 2 of the people that committed the murder were former students at my high school all and of the teachers were talking about how weird it was to have taught to-be murderers.” — FlobHobNob

22. Two murderers escaped from a maximum security prison up the road

“I grew up in a small town in upstate NY. A while back I went up to spend a month during the summer visiting and stayed with my old neighbor. She called me one afternoon, after I had been home alone all day, and told me to call her kids inside and lock all the door. Two murders had escaped the maximum security prison a few miles up the road early that morning and had not been found. It took the entirety of my stay to locate them. One had been killed by the cops and the other had been detained.” — stephuhel

23. Someone broke into my garage and drove a knife into the wall

“Someone broke into my garage and drove a knife into the wall by the door clicker thing. It was a town of about 2000. It was so unsettling because there’s a good chance I’ve seen whoever did it. And they’ve seen me. And they broke into my space and scared the heck out of me. And I probably smiled at them at the local co-op or something. In a bigger town you’d be like ‘oh it was probably random’ and maybe it was for me. But I probably interacted with the person who did it.” — Gogogadgetskates

24. A girl died in the middle of class

“We had a girl die during a class in school. Like, just drop dead. She had no previous problems that anyone knew of, so it was a total surprise. The whole school was kind of quiet and muted for the rest of the year.” — swadextra 

25. A man broke into a farmhouse and tied up a woman

“Grew up in a small town of 75 people. We had a guy break into a farmhouse, tied up the wife and she recognized him despite his mask so she asked why he was doing this. He got scared and took off. Locals in the area went into lock down. The police found him hiding in his house. When they searched his house they found loads of stolen items. Evidently, he was breaking into local houses and stealing women’s/girl’s clothing. They set up a table at the community center and asked people to come check if they recognized anything. He had one of my sister’s swimsuits and a couple pairs of my underwear (I was about 12). Fucking creep.” — LexasaurusRexx Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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