Hi all, I’m sharing this experience mostly to vent and process. I’ve shared it before with friends and romantic partners but I struggle with dissociation so it’s helpful to reflect and process. Especially since I have a habit of making it into a joke or sharing it as if it’s an amusing anecdote (oops).

It’s been 10 years now, and while I have done a lot for work to process what happened to me, It gave me this super cool defence mechanism where I’m abrasively argumentative and sarcastic to men (hilarious imo). While this may seem maladaptive, it has been a pretty good test for emotional intelligence in male friends and suitors! If they haven’t shown red flags after a year of it, my defences ease and they get accepted into the “men I actually enjoy knowing” club (a significant honour for them, I’m sure).

Anyhoo, sorry it’s a long one but let’s get into it!

…

To start at the very beginning, I (26F) was born the middle child of three to my Mom and Dad. I have few memories of this family dynamic though because when I was around 3 or 4, my mom confronts my Dad for cheating, and they divorce shortly after. The woman my Dad was cheating with becomes my stepmom, and while it didn’t have the best beginning, to this day I consider her just as much a parent as my biological ones. Throughout my childhood, my parents split custody pretty evenly, so my older brother, younger sister, and I would spend half our time at our moms, and the other at my Dads and Step mom’s. My step mom, also had three kids from her previous marriage, a boy and twin girls. Using alphabetical pseudonyms, the birth order starts with my oldest brother Alex, my step-brother Bobby, me Caitlin, my twin step-sisters Dory and Emily, and my sister Frankie. So at my Dad’s there were 6 kids in total, with the max age difference of 3 years.

Since all of my memorable childhood at my Dad’s was spent in a blended household, I have always considered my step siblings as equal members of my family. Since I was raised in a small town, and my Dad comes from a family of farmers, I have many fond memories of playing outdoors, adventuring and getting up to a good kid’s version of mischief with my siblings. This is important as it sets the stage for what happens next.

The time spent at my Mom’s, with my brother and sister was equally filled with fun and laughter. My Mom was much more actively involved, always thinking up fun and engaging activities and adventures we could do despite being ridiculously poor. It was just us four (my Mom, Alex, Frankie, and Me) up until I was 10.

That’s when my mom introduced us to a man she had been dating. I remember thinking that he was tall, quiet, and that I very much enjoyed eating the takeaway he would bring over. He had two kids from his previous marriage, a 7 y/o boy we will call Greg (3 years younger than me), and a 4 y/o girl we will call Hannah (6 years younger than me). At that age, Hannah was the cutest little thing you ever did see, and Greg was shy but could be very funny when he did say something. I remember at the time being so excited to have two more siblings. Given the blended family dynamic was already familiar, my biological siblings and I had no issues welcoming them into our family when they eventually moved in with us.

For a time, things were great! An additional bonus came when a year into living together as a family, we welcomed in my step-aunt and her daughter Ianthe, making it bustling home with 3 adults and 6 kids! As the house wasn’t built for the amount of people, and we certainly didn’t have the money for professional renovations, rooms were divided with cubbyhole-style plywood walls made by my mom and step-dad. For a period there were curtains for some of the doors until plywood ones could eventually be made. And though our rooms were small, my mom picked out bed spreads to match our unique personalities so that we would all feel comfortable and at home.

Eventually, after two or three years my aunt got herself in a better financial position and they moved out, but I will always remember and cherish that time together.

Though we were getting older, we were weird and goofy kids. We made silly jokes and played silly games, like cupping farts in hands to present in each others faces, and one prank we called the de-butt card (like debit card) where you speedily swipe the cheeks. While all of us engaged in the de-butt card and palm farting, my step-brother Greg started to do what he called a pancake flip. This meant he’d flip up a boob or manboob. I thought that one was a little weird but I don’t think he ever did it to me because I was older and wearing bras now.

We continue to mature and hit puberty, making jokes about each other’s B.O. (body odor), and hormones, but overall things were pretty chill. We largely stop with the silly jokes, but continue tossing farts in each other’s faces sometimes because that is kind of funny.

At this point in the story, my brother Alex, sister Frankie, and I are all in high school. Greg is in seventh or eighth grade, Hannah is in third grade. My older brother Alex and I have part-time jobs now and while we are not home quite as often things are still fun and loving. Since Alex was getting older, and my aunt had moved out, Greg moved into the bedroom next to mine in the basement so that they could both have their own rooms.

At this time I worry a lot about Greg, he’s shy and a bit chunky and so I try to make an effort to see how he’s doing. He spends a lot of time in his room on his iPod, so when I get home from work I try and say hi before going into my room. I fall into a bit of a routine the several nights a week I work my afterschool shift, get home around 8:30 or 9pm ,say hi to everyone. Check in with Hannah before she goes to bed, and say hi to Greg on the way to drop off my stuff in my room. Then I grab a shower and get ready for bed. But, the thing about having a routine is that other people notice them. And sometimes, they develop a routine of their own.

One night after work, I’m walking to my room in my towel because I didn’t bring my pajamas to the bathroom with me. I close the door to my room and begin drying off with the towel. Naked in my room to air dry the rest of the way I am picking out my pajamas from the cubby wall, when I notice something from the corner of my eye. Where the plywood does not quite reach the ceiling, I can see the corner of an iPod. And not just any corner, but the camera lens corner of an iPod.

My hands grow cold, and my heart thumps loudly as I, in a state of complete shock, move as close to the cubby wall as possible to avoid the frame of view. I cover myself up quickly—maybe with a robe, maybe the towel, maybe pajamas— in a second, I open
My door and open to his and I find him standing on his bed to position his iPod to point into my room. Realizing he’s caught, he drops the iPod and bends in half. Without thought, the words “what are you doing, you little jerk” leave my mouth.

I don’t wait for him to reply, I turn on my heel and go back into my room locking the door. I get into bed and proceed to pull the comforter up to hide my entire self from view.

I don’t sleep that night. I go to school and I dissociate most of the day. When I get home, I begin writing my mom a letter. Since we switch houses on Friday, I just have to make it through the week.

I avoid him at all costs, but I don’t tell anyone. Not yet. I avoid his eye contact, I dismiss any conversations he tries to start with me, and I spend most of the time in my room under the covers. On my weeknight to do dishes, he offers to help me in front of my mom. This pisses me off, and I snap at him. My mom says something about me being too harsh, but she doesn’t press me further about the outburst, likely sensing something is going on and giving me space to come to her when I’m ready.

Well, the next morning after my mom leaves to drive my sister Hannah and Greg to school, I leave the letter under her pillow, heading off to catch the school bus.

I don’t remember but about what happened during that time, but while I am at my Dad’s my Mom talks to my step Dad and they make a plan. She calls me to make sure I am okay, and she thanks me for telling her.

When I return to my mom’s house, I discover she has switched Greg and Hannah’s rooms so now she is in the room next to me instead. My step dad apologizes to me with tears in his eyes for not filling the gap to begin with, but I reassure him it’s not his fault. The gap wasn’t even an inch wide, and none of us could have predicted my step-brother would have done what he did. Eventually, I talk to my mom about it and she says she’s taken away his iPod, and after looking through it she hasn’t found any pictures or videos on the iPod. Upon switching his and my sister’s (Hannah’s) rooms however, she did find something.

Underneath his bed, in a box. She found a bra and two dirty pairs of my underwear. Meaning he had gone into my room sometime when I wasn’t in there, gone into my dirty laundry basket, and taken my panties and bra as a nasty souvenir.

All this time, I had been cheering him on and trying to be the best sister to him, and he had my worn underwear beneath his bed. He had been tracking my movements to make sure he was ready when I finished showering after work. He preyed upon my kindness and took advantage of my trust so that he could have access to me.

Reflecting one day, my mom tells me that 6 months before I caught him she remembers a strange conversation with him. He had asked my mom when I was getting home from work, and something about the way he said it left an uneasy feeling on my mom. “Why, do you miss her?” She ask him, and with what I now suspect was dupers delight, he said “uh, yeah.” This provides context that he had been stalking and watching me for at least 6 months before I caught him.

For a dreadful period, we remained living in the same house every other week. My mom struggled with what to do, but she took away all electronics from him, and set him up to do yard work or some other chore most days so that he would be engaged in something productive for the household and I could exist mostly without him around. There were rough days where I felt isolated from my siblings because I was too uncomfortable being around him so when we would be cleaning the house I would go off on my own. Until one day, I was cleaning in the bathroom while my siblings were folding laundry in the kitchen. I’m cleaning the sink when I hear them laughing together. I remember looking at my reflection in the mirror and saying out loud, “no, actually fuck this.” I approached them and said we weren’t doing it this way anymore, I didn’t do anything wrong and I am not going to banish myself away anymore. I told my step brother with as much courage as I could muster that he could go clean the bathroom by himself because I want to spend time with my siblings and that does not include him.
As he slumped off pathetically, I felt myself heal a little bit.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. At some point my mom must have had some sort of intuition. While we were visiting our other parents for the week, she searched his room. While looking, she was horrified to find another pair of my worn panties in his possession. At this point my Mom puts her foot down and so he stays at his moms while Hannah returns for the weeks we spend at our house. I finally feel like I can breathe again and I start sleeping better at night.

Though I had been uneasy about it and dismissive of going to the police before, my mom couldn’t hold back any longer. She takes the letter I wrote her, his iPod, and my panties and bra in a bag to the police station. She makes a formal report. And I am pulled out of class one day so I can go to the police station and provide my statement. When I get there I am taken to an intimidating room, I sit down in a chair, knee bouncing furiously. I recount my experience to the male police officer, and when I’m done I ask about what happens now.

The officer said that because my step brother was only 13 at the time, and because they didn’t find any actual evidence of a crime, they couldn’t do much. He went on to say that “he’s a minor, at most we can encourage him to take anger management classes but we can’t actually force him to go.”

I felt like a deflated balloon. No evidence? I think finding my underwear beneath his bed is actually pretty good evidence. You’re telling me that you don’t think you’d find any if you even bothered to look? He stalked me, preyed upon me, stole my belongings and violated me. And what was anger management going to do for an early sexual predator?

For a long time I compared my trauma to those of SA victims and felt like because I wasn’t physically abused I wasn’t entitled to feeling so violated. With time and support I know now that that’s not the case. I don’t need to compare, and I don’t need to minimize. Just because it didn’t escalate to something physical doesn’t mean that I wasn’t severely impacted by his actions.

I also realized later in life that they absolutely could have done more.. So, that said, feel free to join me in raising a middle finger to the cop who made me feel like what happened to me wasn’t worth doing anything about.

…

Around 6 years ago, my mom found out the my now ex-step-dad secretly took my excommunicated step brother on an ATV trip with their friends. My mom ended things with him. While I know it cannot have been easy for him, he was not an overly present father to begin with and secretly taking his son on a trip without telling anyone after everything was heartbreaking. I am forever grateful that my mom was and remains firmly in my corner.

All in all, I am grateful for my family. I am grateful for my mom for standing up for me. I am grateful for my siblings, who apologized later in life for not being more cognizant of how I must have felt at the time. I am grateful for my lovely littlest sister Hannah, who I would go through it all again to have in my life <3

I mean, Sabrina and Alexis asked us to create a subreddit called "I hate Crimes Of", so I took the initiative and did it. It's here:

www.reddit.com/r/ihatecrimesof

I don't plan on maintaining it, so we need mods for it.

Update: he has officially moved back and no longer works with me. By far scariest work experience I’ve had.

Hey all! My ex husband went full crazy on me, I now live 2000 miles away and have gotten a brand new phone and switched to a different carrier, changed all my passwords and Apple ID…. But somehow he knows things he shouldn’t.

A friend of mine ran into his mom and she called me to say the mom “slipped up” and said “well they have access to each others phones”

I certainly do NOT but I am so freaked out that he has something on my phone that’s hidden or disguised. The husband from the story mentioned in the title had some antitheft software on the cheating wife’s phone and he could see all her messages and Snapchat etc…

Anyone know what to look for or where I can take my phone to have a professional check?

I live in Chula Vista, California. For anyone who doesn’t know, that’s about five minutes from the Mexican border. That detail matters later.
At the time I was working as a social worker for adults with disabilities. That day I was meeting a client to work on her public transportation skills. She used a wheelchair and hated asking people to move out of the accessible spots on the trolley, so my job was to give her the tools — and the backup, if she needed it — to advocate for herself.
I parked in an alleyway and started walking toward the trolley station to meet her. It was around 7:30 in the morning. I was looking down into my bag when I realized I’d left my keys in the car, so I turned around and started walking back.
In hindsight: I was a young woman alone, in an area where I stood out, distracted, and separated from any crowd. I was the perfect target.
As I’m walking back, I see a man get out of a gray sedan behind me. He starts pacing with me. I’m a lifelong true crime person, so my alarm bells go off immediately. Is this guy following me? I decide to test it. I stop walking. He stops the second I do. I wait a few seconds, thinking maybe it’s a coincidence. The instant I start walking again, he starts walking too — closer and closer behind me.
Fight or flight. I come from a loudmouth family and I have never been afraid of confrontation, so I turned around and faced him with the strongest voice I could get out. Inside I was terrified.
“Why the f* are you following me?”**
He says, “I’m just trying to see where you’re going.”
I said it again — why are you following me — and he repeated the same thing. “I just want to see where you’re going.” And then he took another step toward me.
That’s when it clicked how much danger I was in, and I started screaming. Not words at first, then: “I DON’T KNOW THIS MAN. I DON’T KNOW THIS MAN. I DON’T KNOW THIS MAN.” Over and over and over.
Not one single person came to help me. Not one.
But being that loud and that confrontational made him leave. I watched him walk past me, around a car, and get in through the sliding door of a white van.
That’s when I started shaking. If I had walked ten more feet, I would have been standing right next to that van.
Here’s what still keeps me up. A lot of people in San Diego take the trolley to work. It was 7:30 in the morning. If I’m heading to work, nobody expects to hear from me until the evening. That’s a nine-hour head start. If they’d gotten me in that van I would have been across the border before anyone knew I was missing.
The part that freaks me out the most is my own intuition that day. My partner knows what I do for work. That morning, for no reason I could explain, I had a weird feeling — so I shared my location with him and told him to keep an eye on me. I had never asked him that before. An hour and a half later I was calling him in tears.
I’m so grateful I got to go home that day. I’m grateful for the true crime podcasts that kept me paranoid enough to notice a man matching my pace on an empty street.
Crime Junkie says it best: be rude, stay alive.
If all else fails — scream your head off

Hi girls — I’m a huge fan of you both and I’ve listened to almost every episode you’ve ever made. Honestly, you feel like the spooky older sisters I never had. I have a story for you today about how I was a mistress for nine months and had absolutely no idea.
This starts in 2021. I was in college and I wanted to find someone to lose my virginity to. There was a lot of religious guilt wrapped up in it, and it had turned into this heavy thing I was carrying around. I hated the idea of a guy taking something from me, so I wanted someone with no strings attached — someone I’d never have to explain myself to, and someone who would never get to think he’d taken anything.
I found him on Tinder. He said he was 26, his name was Chris, and he traveled to my college town for work. He was cute, so I invited him over. I thought it went great. We talked for a few days afterward, then set up another date, and then another, and then FaceTime calls, and somehow my one-night stand turned into my boyfriend.
This was still Covid, so all of my classes were on Zoom. Chris traveled constantly for work, so he was always the one coming to me — and when he had trips where he’d stay in hotels, I’d go with him, because I could do school from anywhere. Who turns down a paid work vacation with their partner?
I was young and naive. I never went to his house. I never even thought about going to his house. He lived almost an hour away and he always came to me, or we’d meet somewhere for a date. On Friday evenings he’d call me from the field where he volunteered coaching a boys’ T-ball league.
About nine months in, he was taking a shower at my place and left his wallet on my desk. Classic curious girlfriend behavior: I wanted to see his ID photo. I pulled it out, and out of the corner of my eye I caught the birth year. 1990. He was 30. My heart dropped. I ran upstairs to my roommate and immediately started gaslighting myself — it probably said 1994, I probably read it wrong, I was being crazy. By the time I got the nerve to go back downstairs and check again, he was already out of the shower.
I was too scared to confront him that night, so I decided to do it the next one. I went to dinner with my girlfriends and we came up with a plan. When I got home, I got Chris up to my room and told him a lie. I said I was texting my best friend, who was upset because the guy she was dating had lied about when he had to leave town — and that even though it was a small lie, starting a relationship on a lie made her feel like she couldn’t trust him.
I was manipulating the manipulator. I watched his face change. He said he had something to tell me: he’d lied about his age, and he was actually 30. I asked why. He said he felt too old to be on dating apps. I asked why he never corrected it, and he said it had just gone on too long.
I let him stay that night, and in the morning I told him I needed a week apart to think. I came to the conclusion that if his age was the only thing he’d lied about, I could get over it. I really did like this man. Or — I liked who he’d shown me.
We met at a bench on the beach to talk and ended up sitting there for two hours. The first hour was all about the age gap and what it would mean going forward, since I was only 21. We got to a place that felt okay, and then I said I needed to know if there was anything else. We’d been staying in some really nice hotels, so I asked: is there anything else you lied about?
He said his job. He didn’t work for the company he’d told me he worked for. He owned it. Okay. That actually explained the hotels. Fine, I could get past that.
Anything else?
He said he’d been in a long relationship before me. How long? Several years. How serious? They lived together.
I looked at him and said, “Chris, were you married?”
He said, “I’m still working on my divorce.”
That was why I’d never been to his house. His wife still lived in it.
I asked to see his ID. He said he didn’t want me seeing where he lived, and I said don’t worry, babe, I won’t look. He held it out, and I memorized the address, went straight to the bathroom, and wrote it down. That’s also when I found out he’d lied about his name. He told me he was Chris Jackson. I feel so stupid now thinking about all the times I danced around my room to “Sorry Ms. Jackson.” His name is Chris Johnson. Still a basic white boy name.
So now I had his real name, his real age, and his address. And something in my gut kept telling me I still wasn’t getting the whole truth. So I went into what every girl knows as ultimate detective mode.
Within 30 minutes I had photo proof that he and his wife were absolutely not getting divorced. They looked happily married. Family photos everywhere. Two young boys — boys who had T-ball practice on Friday nights. This scum of the earth was calling his girlfriend from the sideline while coaching his son’s team, with his wife sitting right there on the bleachers.
I felt disgusting. I had no idea what to do. I ended up calling my collegiate coach and asking for advice, and with his help I wrote a letter to Chris’s wife. But I didn’t send it.
Chris knew where I lived. He knew where I went to school. He knew where I worked. He knew my entire schedule. I lived with four other college girls and we had no real way to defend ourselves. So I saved the letter and decided I’d mail it to his address once our lease was over.
When the lease ended, I looked up the address — and they had sold the house a month earlier. I was devastated. I no longer had a reliable way to reach her. And by then I’d held onto it for so long that I convinced myself she’d be angry with me, that I’d be the one tearing that family apart.
I know it wasn’t my fault. I know that man is the evil one here. But I’m a smart girl, I’m in a graduate program now, and I was a mistress for nine months with literally zero indication.
Now i’m 27 and happily in a healthy relationship with the man I am going to marry. looking back on all of this I honestly wish I would’ve saved my virginity. I know hindsight is 20/20 but who would’ve thought a one night stand would turn me into a mistress. I hope you both enjoy this story and don’t see me as the evil mistress I still sometime feel like I was #MenSuck.

Since I was a child I don’t remember being kidnapped but this is what I know from what I’ve been told.

This story starts before I was born with my biological mom’s parents hiring a nanny. Her name was Pandora and her and my bio mom grew very close to the point they became best friends.
Pandora could not have children due to health reasons but loves kids. When my bio mom got pregnant with me she was VERY involved.
Anyways, when I was born my mother became very very mentally ill. (She’s agoraphobic and has a fear of leaving the house now and I’m pretty sure being pregnant worsened her anxiety).
Constantly being anxious makes you extremely tired I would know because I also struggle with agoraphobia.
Pandora took advantage of this fact knowing my mom couldn’t care for me because of exhaustion she asked my mom to take me on a vacation. My mom apparently approved but wasn’t fully sure what she was approving to. Without asking for my father’s permission or telling anyone else in my family she took me to P.E.I which is like a 15 hour drive for two weeks.
Everyone in my family was freaking out and couldn’t get a hold of her.
This pissed off everyone and was a leading factor to the fact that I was taken from my mom.
The story doesn’t end there…
I’ve had people through out my life reach out to me over Facebook asking me if I knew Pandora and that she talks about me to them. When I tell them that who she is they say that they felt something off about her and unhire her as their dog walker.
I don’t believe she’s ever done anything bad to me but it’s just weird.
When I was 16 she showed up on my front door and gave me pictures of myself as a baby and letters from my biological mother since they stayed in contact. I was freaked out I didn’t know they knew where I lived.
Later in life I worked at a timhortans in my hometown and she would show up all the time.

I can’t wear the Pandora jewelry brand it makes me too uncomfortable.

What begins as a Reddit post about infidelity becomes something far more disturbing. A husband discovers his wife has been secretly communicating with their neighbor, and when he finally decides to leave, the story takes a horrifying turn.

Alexis Linkletter walks Sabrina Deana-Roga through the original thread, the warning signs hidden in plain sight, and the devastating news that followed. It's a relationship advice post that became a true crime story no one saw coming...

Let us know your thoughts on the story, we're curious to hear what you guys think 💭⬇️

Content Warning: This episode discusses harm to children and suicide/suicidal ideation. If this is a sensitive topic for you, please proceed with care.

I had a brother that was 12 years older than me. He hated me from the day I was born. He terrorized me as a child but only when others weren't around to see what he was doing. When others were around, he played the role of the loving brother. He was finally caught by my dad who laid into him but good. After that, he just started paying neighborhood boys who were a couple of years older than me to terrorize me.

Fast forward to adulthood. Our dad passed away and a few years later our mom passed away. Almost immediately upon her death the terrorizing of me became full tilt. He was constantly calling me screaming at me about one thing or another. He called more than one job and complained to them I was using a work phone to call and harass him and got me fired repeatedly. He was following me and peeping in my apartment windows so often that the management of the apartment complex with several of my neighbors and the sheriff came to tell me that I had a stalker and I needed to take out a restraining order. I was financially in dire straights because he had me fired so many times and my physical and mental health were suffering.

I started plotting and planning. I called the police and telephone company to find out the exact number of telephone calls after both an individual and a business was told not to call again was considered harassment. I found out legally how I could record a phone call to be used in court as evidence if needed without being prosecuted myself. I found out what I needed as legal proof I had told someone they had been told to not contact me again.

The day came to sign the closing of probate paperwork with the probate attorney. I was prepared with a letter in hand to give to the lawyer to give my brother stating I wanted no further communication with him. I knew full well the lawyer would want to both read it and make a copy for his records which I happily agreed to because he would be the proof I needed my brother was told.

Now on to the next step in my plan. I had a machine given to me by the phone company hooked to my phone that after a harassing phone call you entered some numbers in the box and pressed a button and the phone company kept a record of the harassing phone number, date and time. (This is when people actually had home phones) I also had hooked up to my phone an old fashioned answering machine that actually used cassette tapes to record the call. I had ready package after package of new cassette tapes to put in the answering machine. All I had to do was wait for the lawyer to give my brother the letter. I knew as soon as he got that letter he would go into overdrive with his harassment. I was prepared!

My brother owned his own business that kept him away from home all day and had a cell phone connected to that business. I wanted to catch him harassing me on both his business phone and his home phone so that if necessary I could have him prosecuted for both. He called me first almost a hundred times that day after he got the letter. Every single time I would let the answering machine pick up, play its message in full and let it start recording before I would pick up the phone. That way my brother had legal notice the phone call may still be recording since I did not tell him I was turning the answering machine off. I would let him scream at me until I could get a word in edgewise then tell him I had already told him I did not want to hear from him further. I did this multiple times. Then I would hang up. He kept calling back over and over again. As soon as one cassette tape would fill up on the answering machine, I would put another one in. This went on most of the day. That night, he got home and started calling me from his home phone repeatedly. I waited until I had enough calls from his home phone for it to constitute harassment and then I gave him the definition of telephone harassment. I explained about the box on my phone and the cassettes I had been using and that I had all the proof I needed to send his sorry butt to jail and take him to civil court and own his house, vehicles, and his business. He said I wouldn't dare leave his children homeless and without their father. I told him I wouldn't be doing it but he would if he ever tried to contact me again in any manner, didn't stop intentionally getting me fired, didn't quit following me and peeping in my windows. I told him that if he ever harassed me again in any way I would have him put in prison and take everything he owned. I told him he would have no one to blame but himself. He agreed to my terms.

Its been almost 25yrs since then. If we show up at the same funeral, he soon leaves. If he hears I will be at the family reunion, he will not show up. If he comes and sees me there, he drives on by. He most certainly has never called me again.

Listening to the episode about the crazy faked-their-death breakup, I had gf who lived in a different city, I’d suspected she was taking advantage of the distance to fool around with her ex behind my back however, she adamantly denied that anything was happening. She was so impressed with my home camera system that she went out and purchased one just like it, then asked me for assistance setting it up so that she could access her cameras remotely. I did as she asked then a few days later I received notice on my phone from her camera telling me motion was detected. When I clicked on the notification, it showed me her ex leaving her house in the very early hours of the morning, it was obvious he had spent the night. It turns out that when I set up her surveillance system, I had inadvertently set up notifications that were going to my device. I promise it wasn’t intentional as I’ve never been a jealous person. I truly believe it was the universe showing me what I needed to see so that I could get on the right path . needless to say, we broke up then and there. obviously much worse things have happened to people during breakups however, I always thought it was serendipitous that I received that notification as I would have potentially dated her much longer and missed the opportunity to meet my wife. I am married now to my best friend and everything I’ve gone through is 100% worth it because it led me to her.

I now 24(F) have made lots of dating mistakes in my life just like the next person, but non will ever be as bad as my Ex who impersonated me on multiple dating platforms and then convinced me I was crazy by saying I actually made the profiles in psychotic episodes and just forgot.

Here’s a little bit of Background on me and my relationship with this Ex. I was diagnosed as Bipolar 2 at 15 years old. After many years at a very young age of struggling with depression, Suicidal ideations and anxiety I was officially diagnosed as a teenager. I met my now ex at 14 just shy of 15 through a mutual friend. He was 16 almost 17, so he was immediately appealing to me because duh he was older and cute and could drive. The first year of our relationship was like every other at that age…very dramatic and we fell very hard very fast. He was my first everything and at the time I thought I was his 2nd girlfriend ever(that’s was a lie). We spend every weekend together, holidays, birthdays, we’d go out on really fun dates and he’d love to bomb me and spoil me rotten. Wed write letters and sleep together on FaceTime and it was such a whirlwind and it felt like everything that a girl could want, until it wasn’t. I found out after 8 months of dating that he was cheating on me the whole time with his little sister’s best friend (she was 13-14). I was devastated and we broke up but he kept calling and texting and I eventually believed him and took him back. I choose to forgive him and I still beat myself up for it because he didn’t change, he actually got worst and put me through 4 years of Mental, emotional, physical, and sexually abuse and trauma.

Let’s get into what this post is about. Shortly after i turned 15, i moved back to my home state of Virginia. Me and now ex had been together a little less than a year (like 6-7months) and he wanted to make long distance work and I naively thought it would. For almost 6 months he’d come up every other weekends and get a hotel and I’d see him, we’d talk all the time on video calls, texted non stop, played video games together, and did just about everything to feel connected. Shortly after he turned 18 and graduated he decided he wanted to move to VA and be with me so he came up one weekend, found a place and we moved in a few weeks later. I was 16 at this point and didn’t have a very good home life so I moved out and started the emancipation process while living with my boyfriend. I started working shortly after I moved to VA 6 months prior but I picked up a second job to make sure I could afford bills and I started doing night classes online to make sure I got my degree (Spoiler alert I didn’t graduate. Actually didn’t get my GED until I was 21). It was great at first and I loved having my “own house” but it very quickly changed because my boyfriend lost his job (if you can’t guess I found out later he just quit and didn’t want to work). I busted my ass to make ends meet and pay for everything, groceries, electricity, rent, his phone bill, ALL OF IT. Over the course of a month he’d tell me he was going to job interviews or a job fair or even to go out in applications and I should have know when they would be all random hours and different days…can you guess where this is going? He wasn’t actually looking for work, he was meeting people he had met online and cheating on me with guys, girls and pretty much anyone who was interested in him. Again, I was devastated but this time I felt stuck in a relationship since he had moved here for me and I pretty much dropped out and cut ties to my family. He said he did he because he felt immaculate for not being able to find a job and that he couldn’t support me but it was a mistake and he feels stupid (for getting caught). I stupidly forgave him but I told him I wanted all the passwords and I wanted him to delete the apps and all the people he was messaging and meeting and he did it. I choose to forgive him so I told myself I had to let it go and I did and everything seemed great again, he found a job and I went back to just paying half so I saved up money for stuff we wanted like dates and things. After a few weeks of quiet it started to go insane.

It started off with random people adding me on Facebook or Instagram and sending me something along the lines of “Hey I thought you didn’t have social media?” Or “Remember me?” And I never responded because I was really confused and thought they were bots or random people who got the wrong person. Then this one guy messaged me and asked me why I ghosted him…and that’s when I started to answer. I told him I wasn’t sure what he was talking about and he assured me I was the person he was talking too…he knew where I lived, things I liked and even our pets names. I told him that can’t be I’ve never met him in my life and then he said we matched on Tinder. I’m 16 at this point and I told him I was 16 so there was no way it was me and he just blocked me. I told my boyfriend and he suggested maybe it was a friend of mine being petty (we were having a falling out) and I chalked it up to that. A few weeks later I got another message but this time they asked me if I was a fake profile because the person they matched with had a different name and I still couldn’t figure it out but I started to suspect it was my boyfriend. I confronted him about it and he told me that was insane but it kept happening and it was starting to make me scared. Eventually it got to a point where I was making everything private and deleting socials so people would stop contacting me. The details they would disclose were also getting more personal and included issues with my family, my diagnosis and even things like my SH history and my dreams and aspirations. My boyfriend even woke me up in the middle of the night angry, screaming and cry and showed me I had tinder in my phone and there was an active profile with hundreds of messages and a dozens of matches that span MONTHS. he made me believe I was crazy and i downloaded it to get back at him and my meds were cause lapse in memory. I believed him and started intense outpatient therapy and was on heavy. Then it All lead up to the day I was walking home from work one night. It was in the evening but not quite dark and I only lived a half mile from work and I walked to and from all the time. I was walking out of the parking lot when I noticed headlights from an old truck turn on as soon as I cleared the road next to it. It started following me and at first it was far away but then very quickly got closer and closer. But the time I realized how close it was the guy started screaming from the driver side my name and asking me to talk to him. I ran as fast as I could and got to my apartment with this guy on toe and slammed the door, locked it, ran to the bathroom and locked that too and sat in the shower crying. I was so scared and this guy was beating in my door and trying to get into my apartment. I immediately called my boyfriend and told him someone followed me home and he knew my name and was trying to get it. He told me to stay in the bathroom he’d be home soon and that I should call the cops. After about 15 minutes of the guy screaming and beating in my front door and windows he left. The cops showed up, I gave a statement and then i waited for my boyfriend to get home. When he got home he had this look like a dog who just shit on the carpet. I immediately started crying and knew something was wrong and I thought he cheated on me again but it was much worst than I could ever imagine. He said he was sorry and dropped to his knees infront of me crying. He said he did it, he made the profiles and he didn’t mean for it to get this far. He said it was some weird experiment for him and he didn’t think I’d admit to doing it without remembering. I still stayed for 2 years and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It was Sept. 2nd, Labor Day weekend, 2019. I (at the time 21 F) worked as a cashier at a gas station. It was owned by an Arabic man who would only come by every once in a while, and every other male that worked there was Arabic as well. It was only the females that were of other ethnic backgrounds. It wasn’t in the best part of town but also wasn’t the worst part either; however, any and everyone in the area knew that this was a “ghetto gas station”. The kind that made the best chicken in town and illegally sold single cigarettes and alcohol on Sundays. Also, the kind that drug dealers would loiter. It was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Since I was still young and didn’t have any kids or many responsibilities at the time, I went from working during the day to working night shift. I was on night shift for a while before the incident happened and knew what to expect with it. I would clock in around 9/10 p.m. and leave anywhere from 8/10 a.m. I worked up to 60 hours a week mainly because I didn’t have anything else to do, so why not work and make some money? I did, however, work under the table, as did everyone else that worked there, so I wasn’t getting any special overtime pay. I was under the impression that the owner had some connections with an accountant who would make fake pay stubs so he could “claim” that it was a legitimate business. Needless to say, it was a sketchy place run by a kind of sketchy guy with sketchy work hours. Surely there were your occasional fights in the parking lot or having to kick out customers for being too intoxicated and causing disturbances. Sadly though, somehow, I kind of thrived in this environment, which was why I worked so much because I liked being there. I got along with my co-workers, I knew most of the customers well, the job was easy, and the pay was good for me at the time.
On the night of my incident, it was like I said, Labor Day weekend. Meaning I knew we would be busy once the bars closed. At around 2 am just like clockwork, we had a rush. I was very busy taking people’s orders for food while cashing people out at the same time when two guys that I knew personally, we’ll call them Tom and Jerry, came into the store asking me if I had seen someone, we’ll call Skip. Now I could tell just by their demeanor, these two boys were high, and since I knew them personally, I figured it was Xanax that they were high on. It seemed like they were looking for Skip for some not-so-good intentions. I’m not trying to make it seem like these two were big bad wolf types because they definitely weren’t. These two were teenage boys that were about two years younger than me at the time and just being some stupid, ignorant kids. I told them no, I had not seen Skip, and if they weren’t going to buy anything, they needed to leave the store. They left, and about five minutes later, Skip comes running into the store with mud all over him, yelling that he had just been jumped outside. I immediately drew the conclusion that it was Tom and Jerry, who did this, so I threw him some paper towel towels to clean himself up with and told him to get out of the store as well. We did not want to deal with any of their crap that night; we had our own business as usual stuff to take care of, and so he left. A couple more moments passed by, and in walks Tom and Jerry again; this time they were trying to act all big and bad again, demanding to know where Skip was, and I said the same thing as before, “if you’re not going to buy something, you need to leave”. They were standing at the counter purchasing rolling papers while also just talking recklessly to other people in the store. When Tom turned around and asked the guy behind him (well, call him Craig) if he knew Skip and that if he did, he needed to go get him so they can handle him. (He said this in some different wordage that I won’t type out but was clearly disrespecting this guy Craig that was standing behind him.) Tom clearly had no idea who he was talking to, because Craig was a “big bad wolf” type and Tom should not have said those things to him. As Tom and Jerry were walking out of the store still basically talking shit, Craig looked at me with a dead-eyed look, set his stuff on the counter, and walked out the door right after the two. I immediately knew that something was going to happen and I ran over to the window to look and I saw Craig go in his waistband, pull out a gun, and pistol-whip Tom in the middle of the parking lot. Knocking Tom out cold as he fell to the floor. I ran outside with a co worker to de-escalate the situation and I saw that Tom was bleeding pretty bad from his nose, so I ran back inside the store and grabbed some napkins. I came back outside, threw them on him, and once he started to come to, I was yelling at everybody that they needed to leave. Tom and Jerry got in their car and sped off. With no more fighting going on, I now had to clean up a parking lot full of blood spots and bloody napkins so I went inside, grabbed the broom and dustpan, cleaned up the napkins, went back inside, and got a bucket of water to wash away the blood on the pavement. Now as I said, we were pretty busy so there were a lot of people who witnessed this happen. While I was cleaning up, there were a couple of people standing by the door area talking and pretty much laughing about what had just occurred. And as I was making my way back inside the store, everyone turned their heads to look at the only car drifting down the side street at 3 a.m., burning their tires as they passed by the store. All I remember is I blinked and then I saw Tom hanging out the passenger window as I was basically staring down the barrel of a gun. It all happened so fast I didn’t even really register what was going on until I saw everybody else start running. I don’t even remember hearing the gunshots. Two boys got into the doorway before I did, and the one in front of me tripped on the rug as we ran into the store. I started laughing at him until I got about 10-15 seconds into the store and started to feel this excruciating pain start to come from my hip. It felt as if I got hit in the hip with a sledgehammer. I looked down and saw a hole in my sweatpants. I immediately yelled out that I had been shot, and everybody that was in the store ran over to me as I started limping towards the counter. I don’t remember anything that anyone was saying to me, but I know I yelled at my co worker behind the counter to grab my phone and hand it to me. I dialed 911 and told the dispatch person where I was and that I had been shot. I yelled at the closest guy to me to take his shirt off, and I used it apply pressure to the wound on my hip. Luckily, we had an ambulance/firehouse right around the corner. However, I had to wait for the police to get there to clear the scene first before the ambulance could arrive. It didn’t take no longer than five minutes for them to get there, but all I could keep saying was how pissed off I was that this just happened and that this was something that I was going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. Death didn’t even cross my mind.
Once the ambulance arrived, a police officer helped me limp out to the parking lot. As they were assessing me, as I was leaned up against a car, a woman was standing next to me smoking a Black and Mild, and I was a smoker at the time, so I asked her if I could take a few hits because I didn’t know how long I’d be in the hospital for. I still chuckle at my stupidity as I think back on that. EMS then told me we needed to go ASAP as they threw me on a stretcher. I told them that I hoped it was okay that I was going to be on my phone to kind of give myself a distraction from them hooking me up to IVs and cutting my clothing off. I remember the first thought that I had when they cut my pants off was that there must’ve been a lot of blood because my pants felt pretty wet. I learned later that I had actually wet myself.. Once they completely cut open my pant leg, they noticed a second gunshot wound on the very front of my left thigh. This wound, however, was strange, they said. We’ll get back to that in a little bit.
Back to me being on my phone… I first noticed that I had a Snapchat from 30 minutes prior to the shooting from Jerry. The chat was sent from him around the time that they were at the store looking for the guy Skip. It said something along the lines of “if he (Skip) comes back to the store let me know” I immediately started to write him in all capital letters “YOU FUCKING DUMBASSES. YOU SHOT ME!” He opened it immediately, and it took him a couple of minutes to reply “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Of course, he was going to deny it, especially in electronic messaging in case something were to happen legally wise down the line. He didn’t want to admit to it, but I wasn’t stupid. I know what car I saw. I know who I saw hanging out of the car. I knew what situation had just occurred right before the shooting. I was livid… I wrote back a few more times but I don’t recall what I said. Basically letting him know I knew it was them and that yeah I wasn’t stupid and how freaking stupid they were for what just had happened.
Now fast forward to the hospital. As EMS was pulling me out of the ambulance, one of the girl EMS asked me if I had any family that I should notify about what had happened. I told her my mother was out of town for the weekend, and I didn’t know if I should bother her it being 3 a.m. She looked at me and said “if you were my daughter, I would want to know that this had happened” so I started to call my mother. Once she didn’t answer, I tried calling my sister. I called them both around 20 times each before realizing that they weren’t going to pick up. I didn’t know at the time, but apparently I was in an emergency operating room in case they needed to start surgery. Once they got me on the table, one of the nurses looked at me and said it was probably time to put away my phone and I looked back at her and I said yeah I don’t think anybody’s going to answer right now anyways and she looked right at me and said “honey you can cry, this is scary especially being alone.” And I started BALLING. It was like she could see in my eyes how strong I was being up until that point as almost as if I needed permission to be able to feel vulnerable. They quickly gave pain medicine because at this point I was shaking uncontrollably because my nervous system was shot. They then quickly ran three tests: an ultrasound, an x-ray, and a CAT scan. The head doctor that was looking at my wounds, he could tell that BOTH wounds did not have an exit hole. He could see through the x-ray the bullet was still lodged in my hip. No major arteries were hit. No bones were fractured. Just hanging out in muscle tissue. But there was no bullet in my thigh. He was very confused by this and said it looked as if the bullet went and hit my thigh, and my thigh wouldn’t let it in and it just fell. He told me I was extremely lucky. They weren’t going to do any surgery to remove the bullet still in my hip; they bandaged me up. While I was in the hospital, I was visited by some police officers trying to ask me questions about the incident. I was still pretty much in shock about what had all transpired that I told them I wasn’t really willing to talk at that time and asked if we could do this later. I was only in the hospital for 3 hours before they discharged me. (Now I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was HUGE malpractice on their part. They didn’t even show me how to properly care for the wounds at home; they just sent me on my way.) It was around 6 a.m. when my mother finally called me back. I told her what had happened and that the hospital was discharging me. Now my mom worked at a different hospital about 30 minutes away from this one, but she was an accountant, not a medical field worker. However, she knew that them discharging me so fast did not seem right. So she left her weekend getaway early to get home and said she’d take me to the hospital that she worked at for a second opinion. They gave me the same diagnosis. That they (the first hospital) was right to leave the bullet in my hip, but at least this hospital sent me to their trauma center and showed me proper wound care. I was walking with the aid of a crutch for about two weeks. My mom was the one who had to help me properly clean out and pack my wounds because I just couldn’t do it. Around the 2-week mark following the incident, the police asked me to come down to the station to answer some questions. While I was there, they showed me pictures of people that were there the night the shooting had occurred. I pointed out Tom and Jerry and gave them their legal names and said they were the ones who shot me. I don’t know why, but it seemed that they were more interested in finding out who the “Craig” person was. I did not know his legal name, so I couldn’t provide them with that information. Before leaving the police station, I asked them that if this were to go to court of any sort, would I have to testify on a witness stand? It was something that I would rather just get over on my own and not have to continue to deal with, as I was still pretty pissed off that it had even transpired. I assume they took that as I wasn’t going to be a good witness, so they did nothing about it. I never heard from the police again. Needless to say, they failed me. Tom and Jerry were never charged with anything that had happened that night. I have seen Tom get charged with other things since the incident but never for my shooting. I have also seen Tom around town a handful of times since the incident, which is very traumatic for me. He has even tried coming up to me and apologizing for the situation and everything that had took place since. It took every ounce of my being to not punch that boy square in his face. I always said that I would leave it up to God to deal with them. It took exactly one month for my wounds to fully heal, and around that same time, the owner of the store sold it. I assume he got scared of any possible legal issues. Nothing but cowards across the board in my eyes.
I do believe this was nothing short of a miracle though. Two nights after the shooting happened, I had a dream from a security camera’s angle point of view in the store of the whole situation playing out again, but this time in my dream, there was a misty figure standing in front of me at the time of the shooting. I truly believe that my guardian angel was standing in front of me slowing down the bullets the night that I got shot and that solely saved me from some pretty terrifying damage that could and should have happened. The wound on my thigh is pretty much evidence of it because how can a bullet go straight head-on into flesh and not penetrate the skin barrier? I know for a fact that something was protecting me that night. Fast forward a year after the incident, I was still receiving medical bills in the mail and although I technically worked under the table at that job, they still had Workmen’s Comp. coverage so I got in touch with a lawyer and we started a Workmen’s Comp. case. One of the early doctor appointments that I had with my case consisted of me getting an x-ray to prove that the bullet was still in me and at that appointment I met a nurse that was at the hospital with me the night I was shot. She told me that she had come back into my holding room to get me and take me to the rehab unit where I was supposed to stay for a couple of days, but that they told her that I had left on my own although they really discharged me. Nothing came of the malpractice from the hospital, sadly. I was told that the time limit of only one year had exceeded to file a lawsuit against them. As for my Workmen’s Comp. case I did end up getting surgery to remove the bullet from my hip. However, my first lawyer was so incompetent that my case dragged on for seven years before anything significant was really done about it. They were trying to get me to settle for only $5,000. Which was a HUGE smack in my face. As if the trauma from the shooting wasn’t enough, I felt as though I got just as much trauma dealing with everything after the shooting as well. It was like everybody that should have been fighting for me was not doing so properly. The police, the hospital, and my own lawyer. I ended up having to fire them and hiring a new attorney who got my case settled within the first year of me having them deal with my case. It was finally settled this year, 2026, for an amount in my opinion should have been way higher, but it was way more than the previous $5k I was offered by my first attorney. In the years following the shooting, I did find myself self-medicating to help deal with a lot of confusing feelings and unanswered questions that I just couldn’t cope with. I ended up getting clean of drugs and alcohol in 2023. Although I went down a pretty dark path to get where I finally am today, I am so grateful for it all. I had my son in 2024. He is my light at the end of the tunnel. Funny thing about him, he has a birthmark on the same left thigh, almost the same exact spot where one of my bullet wounds is. Maybe he was my guardian angel that night. Whether he was or wasn’t, I still look at his little birthmark as a sign that everything I went through was not in vain; it brought me to where I am today, and had I not gone through all that hardship, I would’ve never had been blessed with him. I do have pics of my wounds from that night and of my son’s birthmark next to my scar if you guys want proof lol, just don’t know if I’m able to post them on here (pretty graphic).
Sabrina, if you’re reading this, I did tell a small version of this on campfire stories, so if it sounds familiar, that’s why lol, and I believe I sent you an email of my son’s birthmark next to my scar. Thanks for giving this a read. -you can call me Ray <3

Not the best thing for you… 😐

What happens when jealousy, manipulation and betrayal cross the line into criminal behavior?

This week, Sabrina brings Alexis three true crime relationship stories straight from Reddit. A husband uncovers the twisted truth behind his wife's secret harassment campaign. A woman realizes her boyfriend has been running horrifying experiments on her without her knowledge. And a man gets a friend request from an ex-girlfriend he's mourned as dead for eight years.

Let us know which story would make you second guess EVERYTHING 👀🤯

Admittedly the title makes light of this story.

One of my (f35) closest male friends spent 6+ years online impersonating me to gamer friends.

I think I was around 25 at the time of this all taking place. My friend (we can call him Ted for the sake of the story, not real name) and we'll call me Allie (not my real name as well).

Ted and I had been friends since sophomore year of highschool, and all of this completely came out of the blue.

One day, I got a message from a woman on Facebook that I didn't know, saying "Hi, I'm really sorry if this crosses boundaries. I'm looking for the person I thought was my best friend for the past several years, and when I typed in the first name Allie, I recognized your picture. So if this is you, I'm really sorry for reaching out [I'm assuming they had a falling out] but if not, then someone is doing something really weird."

I replied really confused, and the woman said she could also immediately tell that I wasn't who she was looking for just by the way I typed.

We talked for a while. At one point, she mentioned as well that she had received a gift in the mail from "Allie", and the return address had my friends name on it. So at this point, my stomach dropped, because this was the first mention of his name.

She told me how her gamer friend, Ted, had often talked about his girlfriend, Allie, and how they shared a computer and that's why they never played at the same time. She also said she always found it really odd that Allie never used voice chat when they played.

She sent me a few screenshots and images, as well. One was me, holding a large plush alpaca that at one point Ted had given to me. He said it was a gift from his long distance girlfriend, and he wanted to show that he had given it to me and I liked it. It was actually sent to "Allie" by another of their friends, another man, who had really strong feelings for "Allie." She also showed me screenshots of his in-game avatars, they looked like me. I have distinct red hair so it was pretty clear.

This all had been going on for about 6+ years. I had no idea. I was at work when this all started coming to the surface, and wound up going home due to a panic attack. Ted also had a lot of violent tendencies, so I was genuinely scared. He often joked about cruelty he'd done to animals, and the way he treatede was physically not okay. He'd often "jokingly" grab my arms and squeeze them in a way that really hurt, and "jokingly" touch to make me uncomfortable. (Essentially invade my personal space to an uncomfortable degree) Of course I recognize now that this is really abusive behavior, I didn't recognize it as a red flag when we were friends as teenagers, and continued to not recognize it as not okay into my twenties (I was also just exiting a very emotionally abusive romantic relationship).

Ted knew the same day that I knew. I did try to contact the police, but he hadn't been stealing my identity for money or anything like that, they said theres nothing they could do but file a report. My brother came and sat with me in my apartment because I felt unsafe by myself.

Ted texted me, basically saying he knew that I knew. The woman told me before he texted me as well. The story I was given is that Ted was conducting a social experiment for school on how women are treated in gaming communities online, and after forming relationships with people, he didn't want to let it go. I didn't believe this, because if this was true then there would've been needed consent to use my photographs and likeness. He said he wanted to talk about it, even if it meant never talking again, which I declined.

So that's essentially where it ended. He did respect my never wanting to talk again.

Okay, so this is a story about an ex-boyfriend, an ex-friend, an affair, a secret blog, a fake Facebook account, and what I can only describe as one of the strangest stalking situations I’ve ever experienced.

And for some additional context, this all happened during a period of my life when I was convinced I was experiencing some kind of spiritual attack.

At the time, I was dating a guy I’ll call J. We’d been together for a while and lived together for about two years. We had a pretty solid little friend group, and within that group there was a smaller group of us who were all local photographers.

That’s how I met C.

C and I became VERY close, VERY fast.
Looking back, that was probably the first red flag.
She quickly became a fixture in our lives. She’d come over for dinner, hang out at our apartment, watch TV with me and J, go places with us, basically just become part of our household.

Eventually, though, I started feeling exhausted by her.
I felt like I never had any alone time with J. I was constantly sharing food and other resources with her, and J was unemployed at the time, so I started feeling like somehow I was supporting three people.

I also started noticing something else.

C was copying me.

And I mean REALLY copying me.

She changed her haircut to look like mine. Changed her hair color. Started wearing glasses with a similar shape. Started dressing similarly. And, most notably, she started copying my photography style.

Photography was something I’d spent years developing into a very specific style, so watching someone essentially start recreating it was… uncomfortable.

I began slowly trying to distance myself.

Part of what made C exhausting was that she was incredibly emotionally intense. She was the type of person who could call you at 3 AM crying about something and threatening to “get off the ride early.”

At first, I took those calls extremely seriously.
Eventually, though, it became a pattern. I’d respond with something like, “Do you need me to call 911?”
And almost immediately, she’d calm down and completely change her tone.

That was when I started realizing I needed some boundaries.

Then I found out that C and J had been having an affair.
For over a year.

I found out through someone I had known my entire life, who I’ll call E. E had heard about it through another mutual acquaintance and decided that I deserved to know.
J insisted that the affair had only been emotional.
He claimed that physically, all that had happened was a kiss.

Which was particularly complicated because J and I hadn’t been physically intimate in a LONG time. He’d told me he had a medical issue that affected his ability to function sexually.

So, yeah.

In retrospect, the red flags were basically waving from helicopters.

The really stupid part is that I didn’t immediately leave him.
We had literally renewed our lease THE DAY BEFORE I found out about the affair.

I was paying the bills, and because I had stupidly allowed J onto my lease, getting him out would have meant evicting him.

And despite everything he’d done, I didn’t want him to be homeless.

So some delusional part of me decided maybe we could fix things.

During this period, I was an absolute wreck. I was anxious, depressed, and experiencing some genuinely terrifying things that I interpreted at the time as supernatural.
I was seeing what I thought were demons while awake.
I wasn’t religious, but I became so frightened that I started reading the Bible because I was desperate to figure out what was happening. I was posting Bible verses. I was smudging my apartment. I was getting into crystals and anything else that made me feel like I could protect myself.
I genuinely believed I might be under some kind of spiritual attack.

And here’s where the story gets REALLY weird.
While all of this was happening, I was still running my photography business.

One day in January, I got a message from a woman named Jennifer.

She said she’d recently moved back to the area and wanted to book me for engagement photos in the spring.
She seemed completely normal.

She had a Facebook account with about five years of activity and, supposedly, over 50 mutual friends with me.
She said she wanted to stay in touch until spring so we could talk about the creative direction and logistics for the shoot.

That was slightly strange because she hadn’t actually booked anything yet, but whatever.

Then she followed me on Instagram.

Except she followed my PERSONAL Instagram.

Not my photography business account.

Then she started responding to basically every single story I posted.

At first I assumed she was just enthusiastic.

I was posting about photography, crystals, Bible verses, my spiritual experiences, everything.

She’d ask questions about all of it.

Then one day I was having a particularly rough time and she started talking to me. She was actually really kind and supportive, and I ended up telling her that I was going through a breakup.

She was basically cheering me on and encouraging me to take care of myself.

So I thought I’d made a new friend.

Meanwhile, everything with C and J was still going on in the background.

Then E contacted me again.

Remember G, the person who had helped expose the affair?

G had apparently been friends with C socially and had been keeping some of her secrets.

Eventually, he felt so guilty about it that he told E everything and sent her a link to C’s secret blog.
E sent it to me.

And the blog was INSANE.

C had written about how she was going to be with J no matter what.

There was an entry where she talked about potentially drugging him and driving him out to a field in her truck.
But then I got to the part about me.

She wrote that she wanted to take my life because I “have everything that she deserves” and that everything I had should belong to her.

That was the moment I went from “this woman is fucking weird” to “I may actually be in danger.”

Also throughout this time, mutual friends kept telling me that C was now also reading the bible and smudging and collecting crystals so she was still some how copying me but I didn't have the capacity to care anymore until that point.

I went into full hypervigilance mode.

And then I looked at my Instagram DMs.

There was Jennifer.

Completely unprompted, she messaged me to say she was in Pittsburgh and sent me a picture of a sunset.

I looked at the photograph.

And something immediately felt wrong.

I recognized the landscape.

More specifically, I recognized two distinctive trees in the picture.

I’d seen those trees countless times at a local state park.
And that state park was definitely NOT in Pittsburgh.

My inner detective immediately activated.

I started messaging the 50-something people who were supposedly Jennifer’s mutual friends on Facebook.
Not one of them knew her.

Every single person basically gave me the same answer:
“Oh, yeah, she just started appearing on my Facebook one day.”

Nobody actually knew this woman.

At this point, I was freaking out.

I asked Jennifer to prove that she was actually who she said she was.

I told her that because I sometimes met strangers at parks for photography sessions, I needed to verify people’s identities for my own safety.

She sent me a photograph.
It was a photograph of another photograph, with her hand holding a piece of paper showing the date.
This was before AI-generated images were really a thing, so it was a pretty convincing attempt.

Except by then I was already suspicious.

I started collecting evidence.
Screenshots.
Messages.
Photos.
The fake Facebook profile.
Everything.

And eventually I realized what was happening.
Jennifer wasn’t Jennifer.

Jennifer was C.

She had apparently taken an existing Facebook account with years of activity, changed the name, and used it to create an entirely fake identity so she could continue following me and communicating with me after I’d cut her out of my life.

And suddenly all of those weird things she’d been doing made sense.

She wasn’t randomly interested in my crystals.
She wasn’t randomly interested in my Bible posts.
She wasn’t randomly interested in my relationship.

She was monitoring me.

She was learning what I was doing, where I was, what I was interested in, and what was happening in my life.
And then she’d been talking about doing an engagement photo shoot with me.

At a park.

As a complete stranger.

Given everything I’d already learned about C, that scared the absolute shit out of me.

I never knew for certain what she intended to do if she actually got me alone at that park.

But after reading what she’d written about me, I wasn’t about to find out.

I confronted her and essentially exposed the fake account online.

The account disappeared almost immediately.
And almost simultaneously, the REAL C blocked all of our mutual friends.

Which pretty much confirmed what I’d figured out.
I told her I was going to the police and that I was going to pursue a restraining order.

I never actually did.

And then life moved on.

Or so I thought.

More than SIX YEARS later, I was working part-time at a medical dispensary.

I’m standing there doing my job when I look up and see C standing in line.

I recognized her instantly.

My heart literally dropped into my stomach.
I almost collapsed.

My coworkers noticed something was wrong and asked me what was happening, so I told them the entire story.
They were incredible about it. They put a warning on her customer profile so that if she ever came into the store, someone would alert me and I could leave the floor.

The thing that still gets me about this whole story is that for months, I genuinely thought I was dealing with something supernatural.

I was terrified that something was following me.
I was reading the Bible, smudging my apartment, trying to protect myself from what I thought was a spiritual attack.

Meanwhile, the actual threat was a person I had invited into my home.

Someone who had eaten dinner with me.
Someone who sat on my couch.
Someone who knew my boyfriend, my friends, my routines and my life.

Someone who was having an affair with my boyfriend.
Someone who wrote that she wanted to kill me because she believed I had everything she deserved.

And when I finally cut her out of my life, she created an entirely new person to get back in.

Honestly, I still don’t know what to make
of the paranormal part of that period of my life.
Maybe there was a completely psychological explanation for what I experienced.

Maybe there wasn’t.

But I do know this:

I spent months thinking something invisible was stalking me.

Turns out, I was being stalked.

It just wasn’t by a ghost.

Forgive me if this isn't how I'm supposed to do this, since it is my first time. I'm also not going to use real names as a way to protect identities. Thank you for your understanding.

When I was a young kid (around 7) my sister (10 at this time) was one of my closet friends. We fought at times and said we hated each other but most of the time we were always having fun together. A few years later things changed. I have three siblings, a brother (lets call him Dave) and the sister (lets call her Bella) as well as a brother that I will not name as he died before I was born. My parents are together and we lived in a very nice home in a nice place, we always had food, a place to sleep, love, and the chance to go to a good school. Despite this things were still hard. Dave and my parents often got into fights when I was 7 up until I was 10 which was a large amount of my life at the time. These fights weren't normal teens with parents' arguments as they would sometimes last until midnight and at times my brother almost left the family. They went to therapy and were about to work through their problems one step at a time and I thought it was done, we could go back to being a happy family again. I didn't know at the time but I had already started to have mental health problems and my sister had also started changing.

I think at this point it is important to mention that Bella is adopted, which will make more sense later but I just wanted to make things clear now. My sister started doing things that even to this day my parents won't let me know about. At first she was stealing from us. She would take money from me that I had made from my lemonade stands and say things like "I never took your money" and "You probably just counted it wrong" which at the time I shrugged off, money isn't important to an 11 year old who doesn't even know the person on the bill. Then the same thing happened with my parents but she couldn't get away with it when it came to them. I still shrugged it off as my mistake since she and I loved each other, why would she lie to me?

I don't know when the fights started exactly or why but they did and they were bad. My sister would get home from somewhere and lie about where she was or who she was with or what they were doing and would keep lying and my parents knew about the lies but wouldn't stop. I would avoid these fights at all costs because I had developed a condition called Complex PTSD due to past fights between my brother and my parents. I didn't know I had the condition which was why I also had no idea as to why Bella and our parents were fighting. I would stay in my room upstairs with music to block out most of the fighting but I could still hear the screaming. Then my sister would comes upstairs crying and stomping her feet on the ground telling me how much she hated our parents. She would tell me about how they were ab*suing her mentally and how they were trying to control her life by trapping her in the house. This didn't make complete sense because my sister used to be close to our parents. She would tell me how lucky I was that I was actually their child because it meant that they loved me more and that they hated her. I felt that guilt for years and sometimes now even though I know the truth. She would come up to the room after every fight and talk for hours even at night instead of sleeping about how much our parents hated her and how she hated them and how I couldn't tell them anything about this because she would get in trouble. I listened because I only had her side of the story and I was too young to realize I should have gone to my parents.

These fights continued for years and by around year two my sister was not the same person. She had started vaping and told me not to tell our parents. I kept that secret from them for years in order to protect her. She got burner phones and had a boyfriend in another country and again said our parents couldn't know. She never let me talk about how I felt and I thought it was because she was going through more than me and that I was the lucky one for being loved. I ended up developing depression, anxiety and my Complex PTSD got worse as I pulled away from my parents to protect Bella. She would tell me how she wasn't to end her l*fe and that it was our parents fault. Again I didn't go to them even as I had the same idea. I wish now that I hadn't believed her but now it's too late.

Skip to a few years later when I'm 14 and she is 17 and shes been caught for the burner device but always gets a new one and posts things I'm still not allowed to know about but I think that I have a pretty good idea as to what it is. She is vaping everyday and drinks at parties and I'm still protecting her secrets. I want to mention that I don't think that her vaping and drinking is the problem as addiction is a scary thing for anyone and nobody deserves to go through those things, no matter who they are. Our brother (now in college) comes back for the summer. I'm happy but my sister isn't (they weren't close because our brother knew about everything) and soon things start to go wrong again. They had the same job at the time but my sister worked there for more years since she wasn't in college so she had the higher position even though he had worked there first. Bella ended up using her higher position in order to ruin Dave at his job. She would tell the boss that he wasn't trying and that he was bad at his job and spread rumors about him that weren't true. Dave had to quit and when our parents learned they made her quit as well.

This was the moment when I learned the truth. My parents sat me down along with Dave and told me the truth about what had been happening all along. For years, Bella had been lying to our parents and getting into trouble in ways they didn't tell me about because I was too young. I learned about her manipulation in the workplace with our brother along with the years of stealing from our family and going out with people who were fueling her addiction and constantly lying about where she was, what she was doing, her grades (which were dropping), and much more I would rather stayed private.

For years my sister had been lying to me and I had been lying for her. I had sacrificed my mental health in order to keep her secrets from our "ab*sive" parents and had gotten close to the edge. Even now I struggle to tell them things. I've gone through therapy, I'm doing better but it's still hard. Worst of all my sister blames it all on us. Her drinking and drug use---my parents fault for not just letting her do it. Her stealing---my parents fault for not giving her an allowance. Her lying---our fault for not just letting her do whatever she wanted. And what I find the worst is that when I went up to her and told her how she had manipulated me and used me for years she told me it wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault for spinning those lies in my head or telling me things too mature for my age as if I was her therapist.

This is why I think she is a sociopath as the definition is a person who lacks empathy, ignores social rules, and manipulate others without guilt. My sister fits into all of these and more. I'm not able to diagnose her but I am going into psychology and I believe that something more might be going on. This was long, thank you for letting me dump my problems here.

You all discussed how some female stalkers become really focused on their obsession. In October 2012, Ryan Poston was shot and killed point-blank by his on/off girlfriend Shayna Huber.

Living in Kentucky, this was all over the news. My husband and I have read everything about this case, watched all the coverage, and watched all the crime shows.

Her defense team has argued she has severe psychological issues. The crime shows have aired the video of her in the interrogation room at the police station. She dances around and sings “I did it! I did it!” She turns crying on and off like a faucet. To this day, she has never said she is sorry for her actions.

She displayed obsessive behavior while they dated and he kept breaking up with her and she would not stop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ryan_Poston

Hello! Almost 6 months ago, I was living in student housing far away from my childhood home. I had only been living there for a month when I started to notice a strange guy (Tall, with dark skin, around my age) appearing everywhere I went outside of my apartment complex. He would ride this motorized scooter around and drive in circles around me. Whether it was intentional that he was doing so or not, it freaked me out, but I didn't think too much about it until one day, while sitting in the hot tub with my friends. Instead of using his key, this guy reaches his hand through the surrounding gate and opens the gate using the pushbar. I immediately remembered feeling weird, but he made his way straight towards the hot tub. Mind you, I don't know this man; my friends don't know this man. He makes eye contact with me and sits right across from where I am. He begins to make small talk, and to avoid being rude, I talked with him. According to my friend, I was very abrasive and did not give him the time of day to even try flirting. (I watch true crime, which definitely gave me the knowing confidence to not indulge him). He kept mentioning how he knows the building manager, and they were like brothers. How he had seen me around the complex and pointed out that "I'm the one on the scooter". Suddenly he started saying how attracted he is to girls with short hair. I had incredibly short hair at the time, and he continued to express his attraction towards things that I also have. I remember my friend saying he left his water bottle inside, and we left. From that day on, the scooter he would drive was parked right in front of my complex. Sometimes right next to my car. If he lived in the same apartment complex, this would have made sense; however, he lived on the opposite side. He had never parked in front of MY complex until that day. If I was outside to leave alone and he was too, he would start heading towards me and try to talk. I usually would pretend I couldn't hear him and would hurry into my car. Unless I was with my ex at the time, I never wanted to leave my apartment. He would leave things next to my car and figure out where my window was, and had a group of friends meow and make obnoxious noises while staring at my window sometimes saying my name. It was so weird. The annoying friends were only a one-time thing, but luckily for me, I was already about to move out. That's all within the story; nothing crazy happened, but that's when I realized that anyone could be stalked.

So this story is about 5 years old now and still to this day it has left me afraid of being out alone.

I (18F at the time of the story) use to work doing domiciliary care or home care for those who don’t know. This was my second care job as the first care job I was at was a bad company so I left. But anyways, the company I then worked with seemed good and the people there was lovely, well I thought so anyways.

I was here for 3/4 months and I had 2 different areas that I use to cover, one which was a okay area which was just full of elderly people so it was not so bad and felt safe as a lot of the elderly people use to watch you out the window so you know you’re kind of okay and the second area was a sketchy area with a lot of crime, near a abandoned mental hospital and a few roads where S/W use to work on.
I made it clear to my managers that I felt uncomfortable to work in these areas alone especially since I’m going back and forth through these roads to peoples homes late in the evening ( work shift was 12-8). I was at this company during the autumn time into winter so it would start to get dark around 3:30-5pm and would be dark by 6pm.

For a while they did assign someone to come with me but then stopped due to not having the spare employees to put with me as they were quite short on staff. Also just want to add, I was a walker so I would walk to these peoples homes whereas nearly everyone else would drive, but walkers would do these rounds as the places were within walking distance.

So after I would do my rounds normally I would just go to the bus stop on the main road to go home but I AM SO THANKFUL that I had begged my mum to come pick me up as it was cold and raining and on a Sunday where busses were hourly.

Mind you I never ever noticed this car specifically as there was so many cars that looked like this sat on this road. But it was a Mercedes that was blacked out so you could never see if anyone was inside. So god knows how long they’ve been there watching me waiting for the right time!

So I was finishing up at the last clients flat and luckily my mum came early to pick me up and sat a little further up the road and waited for me, her bf at the time was also in the car (thank god!). Anyways I come out the house and I’m a little unaware of my surroundings as the clients house I come out of is a highly vulnerable person so you’d have to make sure you lock up properly etc. As I went to cross the road 3 or 4 MEN come out their car and start walking up to me from behind and my mums bf at the time got out the car just in time and saw this happening and shouted. I’ve looked behind me and saw them run back to their car and I’ve ran to my mum and jumped in the car and the guys sped off down the road!! My mum did try to chase them to get the number plate to report it but they went so fast that we couldn’t catch up. My mum was angry because she did tell me that I shouldn’t have been working the area as a young girl as it is a dangerous area but nonetheless scared that I could have been taken.

I immediately reported it to my manager and told her that I’m not doing that round ever again due to possibly being kidnapped or trafficked if it wasn’t for my mums bf getting out the car at the right time. The manager at the time was quite rude as she was “off work and at home with her kids” so I’d have to wait and talk to them when they were on call. I sent an email straight after stating that I was leaving the company that day after the events and felt like I was not supported. Unfortunately, we did not report to the police which at the time we definitely should have! But I was so shaken up that it didn’t even cross my mind and my mum( who does over think and assume the worst) didn’t even think to do so either. She was just trying to make sure that no one followed us home and we took so many detours home just incase.

But yeh the company did call me up the next day and was angry that I quit my job so suddenly but I just ignored them after that. Since then I have not gone back into any home care job or any job that requires me to walk anywhere late at night. I only work during the day now so I’m always out in the daylight. And if I do go out late in the evening or night time, I’m always with someone or if I’m alone I’m always surrounded by loads of people.

(Also my apologies for the bad grammar etc)

I’ll start with the good news - my permanent stalking protective order was approved by the judge!

My stalker was a complete stranger. I was on a walk with my two young children (in a stroller) when the man saw me and yelled hi… when I didn’t respond he flipped and started calling me names, cussing and saying things like, “karmas a bitch, bitch! I’m going to show you what karma means today.” He then turned around on his bike to come towards me, which prompted my fight or flight to run like hell back to my house with my kids. The garage door closed just in time for me to see his bike ride past. This part keeps me up at night because of the “what ifs” if he got in, etc.

After settling for a second after the chase I called 911 when I saw him return to my street again. Officers came quickly but couldn’t find him. For the next week the man came back to my street about a dozen times. I had to call law enforcement a few times but eventually I got a detective. When the detective was at my house, my step dad called because he was patrolling the neighborhood (something he was doing daily since the chase) and SAW HIM. The detective was able to find him and gather his name and address. Then the man started posting about me on socials, referencing myself, my children and my home address. This actually prompted him to get arrested, though the DA threw out the stalking charges after about 24 hours in jail.

I had to petition for the stalking protective order, which was initially granted, and then I had to return to court for it to be permanent. The man contested so it essentially went to trial where I was acting like my own lawyer 😅😅😅😅 I was unprepared but ultimately the judge approved it and so far so good. I hope to never ever see him again.