The red minivan that terrorized my neighborhood

I’ve shared a few stories on here before, but this is the one that bothers me the most. It happend years ago, when I was about 13 or 14.

When I was a young teenager, back in the fall of 2006, me, my family, and my neighbors, started having bizarre encounters with an old man in a dark red minivan.

Back then, I use to live on a hill above an old nonoperational fishing village. It was about a 40 minute drive outside of the city along a highway. The high way to the village was a dead end. There was nothing down that way, except housing. There wasn’t even motels or any stores.

Most of the houses were homes to elderly people, while the others were abandoned fishing stages that overlooked the water. It was very strange to see anyone that we didn’t recognize down in the area, especially from September till May.

We would get the odd tourist during the summer months, but never from fall to spring.

When I was in middle school, every day after I got home off the bus, I would walk up to the mail box. It was about a good 15 minute walk along the highway. The mailbox was up the road, towards the city.

Past my house, there was only about 8 other houses, all on the same side of the road as mine. After those houses, it was just thick trees and marshes.

I use to like to call the area “Silent vill” instead of Silent hill. We were right on the very edge of the east coast, right by the ocean. It was a fog bank all year round. It was rare we would get sunny days. Even when it was sunny in the city, it was still foggy down there. Sometimes the fog was so thick, you barely see a few feet ahead of you.

Anyway. One afternoon after school, while I was on my usual trek back home after checking the mail box, I heard the rattling of a vehicle in the distance. I always walked facing traffic, since my mother would have a fit if I didn’t. Safety rules and all.

It was crawling towards me, its headlights clearing the fog. It was probably going about 5MPH, which was odd considering the speed limit was about 70. The minivan came to a halt about 10 feet ahead of me. Just stopped, right in the middle of the highway. I continued towards it. I figured it was someone looking for directions.

As I neared the window of the car, I could see an old man sitting in the drivers seat. He was of a fairly small build, with light grey patches of hair on his head. His eyes were very watery, and of a dull blue colour.

“Hello young lady” he said in a very soft voice. “Hi” I responded. He started making small chat with me. I really can’t remember what, but it was just sort of casual talking. I noticed he had a small fluffy white dog in his passenger seat.

The thing that really struck me odd about this dog was its body language. You see, this old man would move his hand a lot while talking. Every time he would quickly move it, his dog would sort of scrunch further back in its seat. It seemed a bit afraid of him.

Another thing odd was, he always kept his other hand between the two seats. I could sort of make out what seemed to be something of a metallic material under his hand.

After chatting with me a bit, he slowly turned his head away, then continued up the road towards the city. I shrugged it off, just figuring he was a relative of someone down in the village and continued home.

About a week went by without seeing him, and by then, he was just a memory. I was on my way up to the mail box when I heard the familiar sound of rattling coming down the roads towards me. “Him again?”, I thought. I was a little weirded out by him, so I jumped down into the ditch, and hid in the brush.

I watched as he sluggishly drove by. The entire time, he was looking around, observing. Sort of like a hunter looking for prey.

After he was long out of sight, and I couldn’t hear his vehicle anymore, I jumped up from the ditch and hurried my way up to the mail box. The last 6 minute stretch of road had no housing, so it was pretty isolated.

After snatching up the mail, I started hurrying back, and that is when I ran into him again, in the worst place possible – the long stretch with no houses..

This time, he was coming up the road quite fast. I didn’t have time to hide. He pulled up next to me, and said “Hello deary, why were you down in the ditch earlier?”, “Oh shit” I thought, he had seen me. “Oh, I thought I had seen a cat down there” I said. “You like cute animals, deary? You can get in the back seat and play with my puppy, she loves kids.” he said, smiling.

“Eh, no thanks.” I said, as I started to walk away. He reached out of his window and grabbed my arm. “Please deary, I insist. I can drive you home. You live at (my address), right?” I stood there dumbfounded. How did he know which house I lived in? I shook him off and started to run. He started backing his car up after me!
I bolted down the road and didn’t look back. At the time, my aunt lived a few houses up the road from my house, so I ran into her drive way and started frantically banging on her door. She came to the door and let me in. I used her phone and called my mother to come pick me up.

After we got home, I told her everything. She was very upset and called the police. They basically told us they couldn’t do anything, especially since we didn’t have a license plate number. After that, I wasn’t allowed to go on walks.

He continued to show up. Usually twice a week, right after my school bus dropped me off he would come driving slowly down the rode. One day my neighbor asked him what he was doing. He responded “Oh, I’m just a lonely gentlemen. I saw a women one day down the road working on her garden, and she just captured my heart.”

My neighbor told him she was married, he just laughed and said something along the lines of “If you want love to work, you have to work for it.”, then drove off. My neighbor got the license plate and called the police. About 40 minutes later the police came down, but he was long gone by then.

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