Grandpa’s war buddy
“It was one of my grandfather’s old war buddies who told 9 year old me in great and gruesome details about when he used to sneak into the enemies camp and come back with a bag of fingers.” — hectic_ad
A serial killer in the making
“I knew a guy in college who would befriend attractive single women, but only one at a time. He’d then make it his mission to become their “best friend.” While he was with them he’d be super kind and loving, always flirty but never crossing the line, to the point where he seemed to intentionally get them wanting to date him without ever asking them out.
While he was with his guy friends, however, or women he didn’t find attractive, he’d openly talk about his fantasies of torturing and murdering people, particularly women.
On two separate occasions I remember a group of us approaching the woman he was currently hanging out with and asking her to be careful. One just brushed us off and told us we were being ridiculous, but the other actually became furious that we would mischaracterize him like that. I’ll never forget her saying, “We spend all night cuddling and talking. I know him better than anyone and he would never say that!”
Then the next day, there he’d be, joking about how funny it would be to push a woman down the stairs and watch her head split open on the pavement. Eventually he stopped hanging out with us, I assumed because he caught on that we were blowing up his “game.” As far as I know he never actually did harm any of these women, but it was terrifying how he seemed to get off on knowing that he could.” — FuzzyElf47
Sometimes the mask slips
“I worked in a behavioral management unit in a maximum security prison for a couple years. It’s a unit that houses borderline personality cases, sociopaths, psychopaths, et cetera. Basically a small unit to house the most disruptive inmates in the DOC. We had an inmate who was in prison for burning down a building with a bunch of people in it due to selling his girlfriend some bad drugs. He killed at least one of them I don’t remember the particulars. This inmate was usually polite, courteous, hard working, everything you’d want from an inmate. Hell we’d watch jeopardy most nights and I would be blown away by his ability to answer a massive majority of the answers correctly. Then suddenly he wouldn’t be okay. The most minor perceived slight or minor transgression would change him. He would shut down and become incredibly violent.. and he was so strong. He looked forward to the violence kind of like captured in the Bronson movie. It happened intermittently but when it did he was a force to be reckoned with.
We never had it out, but I was always aware that when I was speaking to him, it wasn’t like I wasn’t having a normal conversation… it was like he had programmed responses that were designed to be exactly what I wanted to hear. Then there are the eyes, you hear the saying often inside the walls “nothing behind the eyes”… he was the only one I ever really felt that. His glare felt dangerous, and I can’t really compare it to anything I’ve ever experienced before or since.
He made it through the program… eventually. The carrot that they dangled was a choice of what prison they would like to transfer to. He choose one that had a particular staff member that crossed him too many times years and years back. He was going there to kill them. He waited years for the opportunity. Luckily he slipped up and someone caught on before he could make it there.
Without a doubt the most dangerous person I have ever meant. There was no doubt in my mind that if he had the opportunity and he felt like he needed to he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me. I am so glad he’ll never see the streets again.” — Dueteronomysfuntosay
The pedos next door
“The man who was the dad of one of my childhood friends who molested me, but even worse the wife who put me back to bed during the sleep over. Telling me everything would be ok and not to tell anyone. You would have never guessed they were these type of people. Total normal church going, hard working business man with a house wife and two kids. They could be anyone’s next door neighbor.” — MickeyRipple
Porn ring principal
“My high school’s assistant principal was busted for being part of a child porn ring. The news said there were images of children as young as toddlers involved, but he seemed to specialize in adolescent girls. The same age as the kids at the high school where he worked. Thinking that he was probably looking at us with creepy intent, makes me feel so disgusted.
Before he got caught, he had this squeaky clean image. The popular kids liked him. He had helped some religious students start up our school’s chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Most of the students and staff were shocked.” — H0lyThr0wawayBatman
“I was planning to hurt you”
“I’m married now, but I had more than one close male friend in my 20s when I was vulnerable who seemed to turn on a dime and act disturbingly and then bail. One actually reached out to me years later to apologize and tell me that he knows he made me feel guilty and like I was going crazy, but in fact he had been planning to hurt me and he was now in therapy.” — AggressiveExcitement
Creepy classmate
“I had a guy in my automotive class at technical school. He would constantly walk around asking different people all day, “what would you do if I pulled out a knife and tried to kill you right now?” Just completely out of the blue. “If I had a gun and pushed it against your forehead, would you run, or try to fight me?” Our entire class openly told our teachers about this, and they’d always say, “he’s just older than you guys, he’s not actually saying that stuff.” As if that made any sense? Keep in mind we were all 20+ years old, and the guy making death threats was almost 30. FINALLY, he told a girl he wanted to grab her ass, and THAT got him kicked out of school. Not the actual death threats. This is a free and proud gun owner in Florida FYI.” — EobardThavvn
Wrong place, wrong time
“That reminds me of a guy in Memphis, he was going into a gas station convenience store. As he opened the door a cute girl walked out and he said hello and smiled at her.
Went in and bought some stuff. When he came out the girls boyfriend walked up and shot him in the head in the doorway. Dead instantly. Just for holding a door, smiling and saying hello to an attractive female.
The guy got caught and is in jail for life.” — Tkieron
Brother’s predator friend
“A friend of my brother’s, who cornered me in the kitchen in the middle of the night when we were all hanging out at my sister’s place and everyone else was asleep. I was trying to politely sidle around him to get away, but he kept outmaneuvering me. It was just mildly irritating at first (I was tired and wanted to go to bed) until he finally stood blatantly in the middle of the door and said something to the effect of “god, you’re so uncomfortable, you keep messing with your hair, you can’t even make eye contact with me.” Irritation turned immediately to fear, because he went from “social idiot who can’t take a hint” to “predator who knows exactly what he’s doing” in a snap. He held that position for just a few seconds, but it felt like hours, until he finally let me go.
I had planned on sleeping on the living room floor (the creep was in the guest bedroom and my brother had passed out on the living room couch), but I was so freaked out went and crawled in bed with my sister. I didn’t sleep that night.” — littleyellowbike
Black eyes
“My wife held the door for a guy that just a few months after this abducted two young girls walking home from school. He butchered one girl at a hog confinement but luckily the other got away. My wife said that he had dead black eyes like a shark and every hair on her body stood up and she wanted to get away from him asap!” — degeneratesumbitch
The most dangerous game
“A friend’s friend, we were high and coming home from a party in Thailand. We took a tuktuk home and he asked the tuktuk driver to drop us off into the jungle and that we’d walk home to get sober. He then got on to talk about how no one would care if we’d kill him, and started detailing different ways of getting rid of his body and the tuktuk. I just told the driver to “duck the jungle” and to drop us off at the hotel. That man scared the living hell out of me, I remember there was something about his eyes. They somehow made me feel like I was staring down an animal, not a man.” — YallTookAllMyNames
IRL zombie
“I didn’t know him but when I was in a shopping centre, there was a guy who genuinely looked like a zombie, to describe what he looked like: yellow and black teeth (most already gone) greenish wrinkly skin, weird posture, white hair that was falling out, and a weird smile that terrified me. I know the guy was probably sick or something but he still terrified me.” — [deleted]
Cop trophies
“I was overseas, and had just been smoking weed in a room I had rented in town when another renter had a chat with me on the porch. Turned out he was a cop, but not interested in small fish like me, but he had smelled the weed. Then he takes out some polaroid’s of people he had shot in the line of duty. He had a pocketful, dead bodies, blood, his own little trophy collection. Anyway, managed to stay cool with him and was more careful about my smoking.” — CurrentlyLucid
A mob boss
“Long ago, in a small, Eastern European country that shall remain nameless, I was out to eat at a fancy restaurant with some locals, when they suddenly went very silent as a small, well-dressed man sat down at our table without invitation. He proceeded to politely ask me about America in broken English. It wasn’t until we left the restaurant that one of the locals quietly said he was one of the top mob bosses in the country, a murderer among other things.” — Frampfreemly
“May we never meet again”
“I got rear ended outside New York City in a brand new car in busy rush hour traffic in 1995 or so. I had recently been in a hit and run so the first thing I did was look in the rear view and write down the plate number. It was either a black caddy or a town car. The passenger was an older man wearing sunglasses, wearing a fedora and smoking a cigar. The driver was a huge man who could have been a linebacker. As I was writing down the color/make/model of his car the driver knocked on my window. I got out. He seemed annoyed. No damage to my car, little to his. He looked at me and said we are all ok here right? I thought better to go along with that. I said we should probably file a police report and exchange information. He said no, we are ok. Normally I would have insisted but I had a pretty good idea of what type I was dealing with. He said “OK, all set then” and I said ok and went back to my car and he said WAIT. I almost pissed my pants. I turned around and he grabbed my right hand, shook it, looked right into my eyes and said “May we never meet again”. I went back into my car and drove off as fast as I could and kept checking my rearview every so often for that car. Never saw it again but shook for a while on my drive to my destination.” — Queasy-Peanut928
Too touchy teacher
“My highschool English teacher, I suppose he was the over friendly type of teacher he was friends with all his students on Facebook/Instagram, he would always see your stories , pictures and compliments you , but it always felt as if he was too friendly and too touchy feely, it finally blew up when lots of female students made an anonymous page sharing tons of screenshots of him texting and sexually harassing them ,some even shared about how he would inappropriately touching them , but they were all to afraid to report him because they thought no one would believe them , he was a very “nice” teacher after all. I just can’t believe that he was a pedophile , he had a daughter close in age to those that he harass . It is always make me scared when you find that a person you made frequent contact with is that creepy.” — -forever_lazy-
Small time creeper
“I worked at McDonald’s and this dude applied, I’m the one who handed him an application, he gave off instant creepy vibes.
When he came in for an interview I told my manager he was weird but he smiled his way through the interview and got hired.
Pretty sure he was a psychopath. And he knew he couldn’t fake being a real human in front of me, he would give me real sinister looks Behind people’s backs. Ended up getting fired, he pushed a big ladder over that almost nailed someone, camera saw it all. He claimed he was “just venting off a little steam”.
He came back as a customer and reordered the same thing like 10 times and just creeping up the place and trying to walk into the kitchen, to eat in the break room etc. Manager finally called the cops. He laughed and bailed on foot across the highway. Haven’t seen him since.” — Dewy_Wanna_Go_There
Clowns
“When I was 16 my I got to go with my best friend and her family to Germany to visit relatives. We were walking down a really busy street in Berlin, taking in the scenery and chatting when all of a sudden we hear a blood curdling scream. I look to my side and a few feet away from me is a man dressed in a very dirty tattered suit and demented clown makeup (think Heath Ledger joker but much less stylized) walking and just screaming as loud as he possibly can. He just kept walking beside us and screaming and no one really seemed to notice him. I think what freaked me out was I didn’t notice him at all until he started screaming.” — victoriafleetwood
Cold-hearted predator
“A few years back I was seeing this guy (I was 20, he 30). He seemed harmless, but there was something about his eyes. Sometimes he would look at me, and I would feel cold. One day I was laying down on his sofa next to his collection of stuffed animals (very weird, I know). He bends over me and starts choking me. I pass out. When I wake up he’s sitting next to me in the sofa. Watching a movie. The fact that I passed out didn’t affect him. He didn’t try to wake me up. The memory of him still scares me.” — bigch0nk
A child murderer
“I worked at a retail store and one of the vendors that brought us bags of ice asked me if I wanted to go on a date with him. I declined. The next time he came in he was strangely euphoric and preaching “God is so good”. A couple of weeks later I saw him on the local news for killing his toddler who was disabled.” — tcarrot0813
No one believes abuse
“As part of custody evaluations, it didn’t matter that he had murdered someone in the past, was diagnosed with Narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and bipolar with extreme psychosis…. the psychiatrist on our case said he was the worst of the worst and our child should not have contact with him. Judge granted joint custody anyway after 5 years of court battles. Luckily he went to prison a month later for stalking and abusing another woman (my past history with him didn’t matter in family court). And the people he murdered in the past, including a child, didn’t matter. There are truly some messed up people out there. Luckily I haven’t heard from him in years. He isn’t incarcerated at this time though, and I fear for my and my child’s life every day.” — AurorasHomestead
Don Severn
“I met Dan Severn at a small Detroit wrestling show once. I wasn’t really into the wrestling so I wandered over to his table to chat with him. I think I asked one or two questions and he went on for 20-30 minutes. He was incredibly kind to talk to me. But the stuff he said was terrifying. He described how he could have easily killed everyone in the ring in horrific detail. I don’t know I have ever met someone I was so positive could end my life immediately.” — Scottishchicken
I thought it was just the moustache
“My best friend from age 8-15. We spent tons of time together from elementary thru high school. Her dad ALWAYS creeped me out. Super creep vibes. Long time. I dismissed the feeling by reasoning it was because he had a weird mustache. He was molesting my friend and others, for years. Sometimes you just KNOW. He was deeply involved in their church community, too. He drove a bus, picking up kids from rural areas so they could attend church. Families put a lot of trust in him, but he gave me the creeps. I never really felt that way about anyone.” — GrackleFan666
Read more: thoughtcatalog.com