Let's Not Meet~ Reddit Horror Stories

My Mom's Stalker Banging On The Door

This incident happened to me about 10 years ago, and the original happened to my mom 30 years ago.

So my mom and dad got married when she was 20, and she had just had my brother. They weren't well off, and they lived in an apartment above a shop. My mom is home on maternity leave (1 year for Canada). She starts getting phone calls, where the person is just breathing on the other end. Then the guy starts talking. He would call right after my dad had left for work, and say "I saw your husband leave for work. I know you're alone." He also mentioned how easy it would be to climb up the shop's awning to get into their apartment.

My mom calls the police, but this was the early 80s. They couldn't do much, but suggested they change their phone number. That works for a while, until the calls start up again. The guy had called my mom's parents and spoke to her brother, who was pretty young at the time. He told him he was a friend of my parents and lost their number.

My parents moved, and the stalking stopped. Fast forward to the mid 2000s. I'm 14 and my mom and I are living alone in a single house. After my parents separated, we moved to the side of town she grew up on.

We didn't have a car, but we lived close to grocery stores and would walk there often. My mom and I look very much alike, and are very recognizable.

One day we are leaving the grocery store and this man stops us. He knows my mom and says "Hi Helen! It's me, Joe!" And I can tell my mom has no clue who he is. He reminds her that he was friends with her other brother in high school.

She still isn't sure but she pretends. He asks where we live, and we give him the name of the neighbourhood. I know it sounds dumb, but it's a huge area. He says "No way! I live on," and he says a Street that's really close to ours, and waits for us to oblige him with our street. We don't. My mom makes a noncommittal offer of getting a coffee to catch up, but they don't exchange numbers or anything.

So we walk home, about a 10 minute walk. The path we take takes us through a small footpath that shortens the time and cars can't get through there. It would not have been easy to follow us by car.

So we get to our street and walk up to our door. Suddenly, a green van pulls up in front of our house and the drivers' window rolls down. It's Joe. He smiles and waves, and calls out "I know where you live now!" And drives away.

We kept seeing him after that. My mom would wait for the bus down the street around 5am for work. She started noticing a green van parked just down the road from her, idling. She asked her friend to pick her up after that.

I would get home from school around 3, and I also started noticing the van by my house. Often I was with friends, so he never said anything to me. One day I was alone. He drove next to me and stopped. I stepped as far away from the van as I could.

"Hi Amanda!" he said. "Getting home from school? Where's your mom?"

I was scared, so I said she was on her way home, even though I knew she wouldn't be home for another hour. I said bye and went into my house, making sure all the doors were locked.

The next day I had just gotten into my house when someone started banging on the door. I'm talking full out police pounding. I don't answer but peak out the window, and I see that it's Joe.

He begins to call through the door. "I saw you go inside Amanda! Open up! We can have a coffee and wait for your mom!" I run to the kitchen and grab a knife and wait there in the living room, too scared to make any noise. I know now that I should have called the cops. He goes on like this for the next 20 minutes and eventually he gives up and leaves.

My mom called her brother to tell him that his old friend from high school was a nut job. He then tells her "Oh, Joe? He was obsessed with you back in school. I always suspected that he was the one calling you back then."

Needless to say, we moved after that.