In the back seat

“I would occasionally ask my mother if she had any scary real-life stories she could scare me with (I thrive off the stuff). She chose not to mention this one until I was old enough to hear it. This story takes place in Canada during the late sixties. When my now deceased grandmother (my mother’s mother) was in her early thirties, she decided to drive to our town’s convenience store after dark to pick up a couple things. She had finally just managed to get her four children to sleep and left my grandfather to take over while she hopped in the car and made the 10 minute drive. Back then, the road from their house to the store had very few neighbors and was mostly just woods on either side of the two lanes. After buying the couple things she needed, she left the store and jumped back into her car, pulling out onto the road for her route home. A minute into the drive she hears what sounds like newspaper rustling in the back of the car. Startled, she checks her rear view mirror to find out the cause of it. Instead of seeing the usual empty road or a set of headlights, reflecting back was a man’s face in the back seat. Scared to death, she instantly hit the brakes (hard enough to shock this man, probably giving him whiplash), jumped out of the car and began screaming loud enough so people near the store could hopefully hear. Having this man’s plan foiled (whatever his plan entailed), he took this opportunity to escape the car and ran into the woods, out of sight. After getting back to the store and calling the police, my grandmother found a cloth covered in chloroform in the backseat. Just a note: Luckily, a couple from a house nearby heard my grandmother’s screams, helped calm her down and took her home. My grandfather said that she was unable to speak for hours, only able to muster up the necessary details for the police (who were the ones who detected that it was chloroform on the cloth). Poor thing didn’t drive for six months after this incident. The man was never caught.” — bigkidtable

He said he could just shoot me

“When I was in middle school I like to play in the woods behind my parents house. Not far down the road was a trailer park that was notorious for meth houses and drug dealers.

One day I was building forts like a typical 13 year old boy when this dude pops out from out of no where. He was carrying an AR and asked me what I was doing. Luckily, him and I both knew each other because he went to school with my older sister and the three of us rode the same bus, but we weren’t friends in the least bit.

This kid (he was probably 18) starts questioning what I have been doing and where I have been and I just told him I was playing building forts and shit. He takes the AR and fired off a couple rounds in the middle of me explaining what I am doing. He then went on to threaten me and tell me how easily it would be for him to shoot me and how no one would know.

He finished by saying some bullshit about how he liked me and he didnt want to hurt me. He told me that if I wanted to keep playing in those woods, that I should never ever go past this certain point or else he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me. I very quickly left and ran back to my parents house.

The way he was talking, I knew he was growing pot out in the woods. I never told a soul about that encounter, not even my parents. Now I wish I had called the cops and given them my story and had that bastard put in jail. But, the dude is serving life in prison now so he got what was coming to him in the end.” — IxJAXZxI

We could go somewhere and play

“I was 8 and walking home from my dad’s office (which was just around the block from our house at the time) and a guy from the adjacent office starts following me and asking questions like, “are you hungry? let’s go get pizza” and “we could go play somewhere if you’re bored” and he kept following me until my street.

Our neighbor, who also happened to be a cab driver, was passing by and offered me a ride home and the guy suddenly turned tail. Our neighbor told my parents what happened and turns out the guy was a pedophile with arrests from another county.

I was 20 before I was allowed to go out without supervision.” — desailes

Knock at the window

“This happened is my old house in Tennessee when I was about 12. My room was arranged so that the head of my bed was pushed up against the bay window in my room, so if I’m lying in bed I’m surrounded by windows on three sides. One night I had just gotten into bed, and was still wide awake. I started staring at one the windows right next to my bed. Then I got this really weird uneasy feeling. Right then I heard seven distinct knocks on the window that I was staring at, coming from the outside. I ran out of there as fast as I could and slept on the couch.” — Elmmic