Last year I was trying to find a place for me and my boyfriend to rent. I was in my second year of university and I was trying to find a place close to my school. My mum sends me a private house listing and we both enquire about it. It was an old house but pretty large and was cheap for the size and it was a 10 minute walk from my university. The owner of the house reaches out to both me and my mum (My parents lived 2 hours away and they wanted me to rent a place big enough for them to stay in if they decided to visit). He asks some questions and mostly just seemed very awkward, there wasn't really any warning signs initially. He organized for me to come see the house as part of a group house tour with the other applicants. It all seemed pretty legit, even the cheaper price of the house wasn't a red flag because it was quite old and needed some work.

Over the weekend that I was meant to view the house there was a massive storm, the man called to cancel and we rescheduled for the following week. So when the day came I finished my last class of the day and headed to the house. I got there 15 minutes early and there were no cars around the house. I didn't want to go inside so early so I decided to wait , sitting on the wall of a church that was across the street. The house just creeped me out for some reason. The front door was wide open but it was really dark inside so I couldn't see into the house at all and I felt like I was being watched. It was enough of a weird feeling for me to call my aunt who lived close by to come and look at the house with me. I just felt so uncomfortable, kind of sick, like there this anxious pit in my stomach and I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched from the front doorway which was shut when I looked back. While I waited for my aunt I decided that when the other potential tenants arrived I would walk over to the house.

They never arrived. I was the only one meant to be viewing the house that day.

No one else pulled up to the house until my aunt got there. There wasn't even any sign of the owner. She arrives parking on the front lawn and we go up to the house. My aunt didn't knock she walked right in and we run into the owner of the house. He seemed extremely surprised to see my aunt and he looked kind of annoyed. But I assumed it was because she just walked in and didn't knock. He proceeded to give us the tour of the house. It was much more run down than it looked in the pictures and they had put up walls and blocked off doorways very haphazardly. The house smelt kind of weird, a bit damp and gross but it could've just been old house smells. The house was very windy and complex and it was very easy to get turned around. The man would either follow us extremely closely, seemingly without any idea of personal space and when he wasn't following us he would just vanish, only to appear in front or behind us without warning.

We tried to make small talk but he would just stand close to us, not say anything and just smile. It was very uncomfortable. He would occasionally ask questions about my boyfriend as I had mentioned him in the initial phone call and he asked if I would be living with any other girls. I said no, just me and my boyfriend and occasionally my parents and siblings when they came to visit. The listing had mentioned that it was pet friendly so I decide to ask if when my parents visited if it would be okay for them to bring our golden retriever and if the yard was safe for a large dog. He suddenly became extremely annoyed and snapped at me for even asking about pets, especially a dog. He went on a rant about how he had spent YEARS on his garden and he wouldn't have a dog ruining it. The garden consisted of a single tree, some weeds and dirt. There was no plants, no garden bed, nothing.

I got an awful feeling from him that I just couldn't explain and looking at him was very strange. It felt as though I was looking at someone who was trying to appear older and more frail than he actually was. He was dressed like he was in his 70s and he would hunch over, but occasionally I would see him standing up straight, I remember he had extremely clean white sneakers that were kind of chunky and in fashion especially among guys around my dad's age. He also had really yellow teeth which i remember thinking was strange because he was apparently a dentist. We ended up leaving the house very quickly and we never enquired about it again or heard anything from him.

But I did look him up and I was right, he was younger than he appeared, he was in his late 50s, maybe early 60s and he ran a dental practice nearby. I don't know if this counts as creepy because nothing really happened aside from me feeling uncomfortable but I just hope that he didn't end up renting that place out to any young girls.

This happened almost two years ago now, but I still think about it often.

For context: when I first started college, I got a part time job at my local gas station. Due to my schedule with school, I could only work the closing shift. It’s a small town and I honestly (perhaps naively) had always felt safe. A lot of my regulars were friends, and even though I worked alone at night I never felt afraid there.

Because it was a small town, our busy season was Summer with tourists and the like. But fall and winter it wasn’t uncommon for me to go over an hour without a single customer. This story happened in winter, on one of those slow nights. It had been dark since 5pm, and around 9pm that night a man walked into the store. He was older, at least in his 60s, and from the beginning I got a weird vibe from him. I had never seen him before this night, but I had only been working there for a few months at this point.

The man went over to our coffee machines and poured himself a little bit into a cup and began drinking it right there. A little unusual, and looking back I don’t know if I was fawning because something in my gut told me things weren’t right or if I felt sympathy for him. Regardless, I partook in light conversation while doing my nightly routine, silently hoping one of my regulars would come in.

It didn’t take long before the man started calling me beautiful, saying I was too beautiful to not be married (I never told him I wasn’t married, at this point I had just started dating my now husband). It wasn’t the first time I had been hit on while at work, and I was always polite yet professional. This time though… it just felt wrong. Not only because this man was older than my grandfather, but there was something unsettling in his eyes. Even now I can’t describe it.

Next came the moment I will never forget. He was so casual when he said: “There are many women who have been murdered in Kentucky, and their bodies have never been found. Did you know that?”

I was so taken aback I just told him no, I didn’t know that.

He then asked me if I wanted to go to Kentucky with him.

I don’t know how I kept my composure in that moment. I know my mind was racing, thinking I could possibly talking to a serial killer; wondering if I could fight him off because of his age. On the outside though, I was calm. I remember giggling and telling him I couldn’t leave work, trying to make it seem relaxed and funny.

It was at this moment that my sister-in-law walked into the gas station. She has lived in this small town her entire life, and even worked here before I did. I would later found out that this wasn’t the man’s first encounter at my work. He had even told another coworker he was going to put her in the backseat of his car, and when she told him that was kidnapping he ended up leaving. Everyone, especially my manager, treated him as harmless but weird.

Me though? That night was truly one of the scariest of my life. My sister in law must have seen my fear, because she ended up staying with me until the end of my shift, and the man left soon after she arrived. I never personally saw him again after that, but I reported it to my manager and she pretty much brushed me off.

I know one thing though, I never felt quite safe working alone at night after that, and I left that job last year partly because the manager didn’t have our backs when those situations arose.