Let's Not Meet~ Reddit Horror Stories

I Was Almost A Jogging Path Abductee

I used to live in Orlando, in a somewhat shady part of town (the five deadbolts on the apartment door should have raised some flags.) But I was a student, and there were a lot of students in the area, and I was young and not yet wary.

Our less-nice part of town bordered a very nice of town. There was a 4-6 lane road that ran through the area and a jogging path that ran along side of it. Our apartment complex was right next to the road and the trail, and a little further down was my local gas station where I would walk once a day to buy cigarettes and other things. Because of the layout, it was easy for me to walk out my door, step on the path, and walk the 10 minutes to the gas station. Walking through the complex took longer.

I often ended up taking this walk at night. Sure I was a girl walking alone, but the path bordered this huge road with a lot of traffic and right across the street was a busy strip mall with fast-food places and such, so it wasn't like a dark path in the woods or anything. And hey, I always brought pepper spray, paid attention to my surroundings, etc...

So one night I head to the gas station around 11pm. As I'm walking along the path I hear something behind me. Turning around I notice, about 30 yards behind me, there's a car ON the trail. Like, it had to have pulled off of the road and pulled up onto the path. I'm stopped and staring, and a guy gets out of the driver's side and starts walking around the grass between the trail and the road as though he's looking for something. "Oh," I think "something must have fallen out of his car and he's pulled over to search for it." I keep walking.

As I'm walking I'm hearing something again behind me. I stop and turn. Guy is now 15 yards behind, still no headlights, and I turn as he stops the car—or he stops the car as I turn. Again he gets out and it looks like he's searching for something in the grass. But he's closer now and I'm a little creeped out. I'm not close enough to the gas station so I pick up the pace.

The next time I turn he's even closer. He stops again when I look but he doesn't get out of the car now. I don't want to just take off to let him know he's scared me but I am now POWER WALKING. My pepper spray is in my hand, but what does pepper spray do against a car?

I throw a look over my shoulder and he's only a few yards behind me. He doesn't stop this time. The distance is closing. Fuck it, I TAKE OFF. I judge the distance to the gas station to be too far along the trail, but there's some trees and stuff on the other side of the path from the road, so I bolt into them, through them, and through a little ditch towards the light of the station which is now right in front of me. It felt like the dude in the car was going FAST.

I look behind me as I'm running through the ditch and I see him through the space in the trees. His car slows down and he's just cruising along the section of path I left. I continue my sprint to the gas station, where I know I'll feel safe; the owners and employees all know me. I make it out front and I'm catching my breath, watching the part of the jogging path that meets the intersection. I see the car clearly for the first time—it's one of those brown car-truck combos, with a tan stripe along the side. Dude drives up the trail to the intersection, flips his lights on and floors it onto the main road, disappearing.

Up until that point I was running on a mix of adrenaline and feeling that maybe-I'm-being-stupid-but-better-safe-than-sorry feeling. Once I had made it inside the gas station I pretty much broke down shaking. To this day I still don't know what that guy's intentions were. Maybe he didn't even see me and was just looking for something. Maybe he was planning to hit me with his car and drag me off. Maybe he was an asshole that was just trying to scare me. Either way, I had my boyfriend come get me from the gas station and I've never walked alone at night again.