Let's Not Meet~ Reddit Horror Stories

Someone Tried To Abduct My Friend And I

It's when I was about ten years old, one late night my friend's parents took us out for ice cream. It was probably around 9:30 pm, the small town we were in settled down for the night, most businesses having already closed up shop for the night. At the time, our town had less than 9,000 people living in it. My friend's parents were both insanely busy and successful people. They owned many houses and rented them out, his dad owned his own business with at least 200 employees, his mother was a college professor, worked in a hospital and did something else online (forget what, just that she was always on her phone, pager or laptop), and they were pretty inattentive parents. My friend and his brother on multiple occasions broke furniture and other things fighting and they wouldn't notice for days, and never ever made a big deal about anything.

After pulling up away from the store just enough that you couldn't see the car from inside (due to other cars being parked closer, presumably the employees as no one else was there and the parking lot was otherwise completely empty), my friend's parents got out of the car, and went ahead of us into the ice cream shop (Baskin Robbins), not realizing we were still in the car. Their car had this weird automatic seatbelt system, and when I opened my door, the belt wasn't disengaging like it was supposed to and I had trouble getting it off of me, so my friend helped me. Eventually we figured it out, and got out of the car.

As we step onto the sidewalk, an old man (late 50s, early 60s) intercepts us, really beady-looking eyes. Thinking back, I wonder if he was high on something, but at the time he just seemed off.

"You kids wanna buy a mountain bike?" He asked, half crooked smile and lazy eye giving him this incredibly off-putting appearance, especially after we heard his voice. He sounded like a smoker. His teeth were yellow and we could smell his awful breath from where we were standing.

To give you an idea as to what I was like at that age, I was incredibly, frustratingly naive. You could run just about anything by me and with little effort I would believe it. I was so naive, I took the fun out of it for many people who tried to trick me because even after explaining they lied to me, I would shrug and act like it didn't matter either way, and taking a while to understand it regardless. Despite this, even I knew something was off about this guy.

"Why would we need a mountain bike?" my friend asked before I get the chance to ask anything myself.

"Well, cause you kids like to go hikin', don'tcha? Mountain bikes make it way easier"

"But there's two of us" I responded. "What if we both want a mountain bike? Who gets to have it?"

This is where he made his first attempt to get us away from where we were. "Well I have another one at my house!"

"But we don't have any money, we're kids. How are we gonna pay for them?" My friend asked.

The man went silent for a minute and just stared at us. "You know what, you can pay me back later for it. It's right over there in my van." He pointed across the parking lot, but we didn't see any van. "it's behind that building right there, now I don't normally do this but you seem like trustworthy kids to me."

That's when my friend and I looked at each other and decided it was time to go ahead and get to his parents. We'd heard enough from this guy and we were seriously creeped out. As we started to walk past him, he backed up and got in our way again. At this point I was wondering why my friend's parents hadn't come out of the Baskin Robbins yet. Surely they realized we weren't there yet? Maybe they saw me struggling with my seatbelt and just assumed it was taking us a while to get it figured out. Either way, I didn't see them yet.

"You kids can't walk away from this! This is the best deal you're ever gonna get on mountain bikes" the man stated condescendingly. "How stupid would you feel knowing you could've had a bike for free?"

"We already have bikes" my friend muttered.

"But I bet they aren't mountain bikes" the man growled. He seemed angry at this point. His friendly demeanor turned to frustration.

He started to walk toward us when my friend's dad walked out of the Baskin Robbins and asked us what was taking so long. The old man reeled, and pushed his way past us, walking briskly until he full on sprinted behind a building.

Neither of us said anything. We were too shaken. Something else I should mention about my friend's parents, while they were inattentive, they were two of the most sincere and genuine human beings I've ever met. Always seeing the good in people and denying any bad even existed. I really don't think his dad pieced together what he saw, and without us giving any indication (besides our unusual silence) that something was wrong he likely had no idea. It was days before we even talked to each other about it, months before we brought it up to anyone else.

I shudder to think what would have happened to us had my friend's dad not left the Baskin Robbins when he did. It's something I push to the back of my head often, but crops up every now and then.